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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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 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."

"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."

"Woah, hey--I like it rough, but there's a time and a place," he protested, but still weakly, still softly, with a grin only a shadow what it should have been. It wasn't until he was actually sitting down that his legs decided to give up the ghost and quit on him. He didn't even have the energy to stretch them out.

The archangel wasn't paying attention to them, though. He stared at the blanket with a blink. "Hey. It's still around."

His had vanished, but he wasn't sure when. Though, that did make some sense, he decided after a moment. When he'd been experimenting he'd found that some things dissolved more easily if he overthought them, like his intent got in the way of the creation and made it stumble. Like stopping to think about an instinct and then forgetting the next step. He'd snapped hers up without really stopping to think, unlike his, and blankets? Not exactly complicated.

"Now if only the friggin' bridge had had the good manners to do the same," he mumbled, automatically eating the apple slice she'd given him. That had been far more complicated. Relatively speaking, anyway. He'd had to actually build it in his head. Pretty sure it had just been too big, though, and not that he'd gotten anything wrong.

"Apparently violence is the only thing that works on you," Re-l said. "Do you have no sense of self-preservation at all?"

She made a face at him and dumped the blanket around his shoulders.

"I don't know why it lasted, but be grateful." She reached out and gripped his chin. "If you move, I will knock you out. Now sit there while I soften the bread up."

She let him go and went back to her food. She'd taken water from one of the larger streams, and it didn't seem dangerous, so she poured a little over the stale bread. It made the loaf soggy, but at least it was edible.

"Eat," Re-l said, handing him the food. She was hungry herself, but she would survive, and he needed it more.

"Sure. I have a great sense of self-preservation." Gabriel squinted up at her, his hair sticking up and face grimy, his eyes hard to see through the goggles he still didn't dare to take off. In the shadow of the ravine, they made everything that much more bearable. "I have a great sense of preservation when I'm inhabiting a body I can usually heal without a freaking thought."

His tone was grumpy. He couldn't help it. Why was she so worried, anyway? He wasn't the only one exhausted. They all were. But they had someplace to get, and it was dangerous out here. Push on, and all that. "Isn't this what being human's meant to be all about? Pushing the boundaries, breaking that impossible barrier, etcetera etcetera? We need to get to that damned city, don't we?"

Besides, the threat was moot. He couldn't move even if he wanted to, and he didn't. The archangel made a face at the feel of the bread, but mechanically broke a piece off to chew.

Re-l stared at him, her mouth slightly opened, and then clamped her teeth shut and sat down heavily beside her pack, covering her face with a hand.

"Do what you like," she said. "Get up, walk to the city. I can't do this. At least Vincent knew how to cook. And eat."

She turned away from him. It would have been nice to make a grand gesture, to get up and stride away, leaving him him in the dark, but she was exhausted herself, and cold, and she knew how stupid it would be. Bringing up Vincent's name had been a bad idea, because a wave of longing overwhelmed her. She hadn't been this long without seeing him since she'd met him, and she wanted to talk to him. He would have made her feel better, even if she pretended she didn't.

Re-l lay down on the large slab of rock, drawing her legs into her chest, and tried to pretend that she was back in the Rabbit, sleeping on the floor next to Pino.

That, of all things, finally annoyed him. He snarled, his hand jerking as if he'd have liked to fling the bread away to make a point but was just restraining himself. "Oh, sorry for having never been subject to a fleshly body's whims before. It's kind of a different perspective between doing them and having them happen to you when you're meant to be a celestial wavelength!"

He'd never known these sensations were even possible, had no idea where the limits were meant to lie given how much humans could achieve if they just wanted something badly enough. If he stopped to think about it he wanted out of this body so badly he couldn't stand it. Gabriel looked away, his jaw tight and the bread crumbling in his hand. His own voice had made his head throb again, and he was still tired, too tired to even be hungry, and in a damned ravine with a chick with attitude.

This was not what he thought would happen after death.

Re-l listened to him shout. She wanted to yell back, to tell him that he wasn't the only person to ever feel pain, that everyone suffered, that he shouldn't count himself unique because he was hurting.

A memory struck her, of the first time she'd been knocked down during her training. It had hurt like hell, and she'd lain on the mat, thinking to herself that she was damned if she would go through for years of this. But she hadn't had a choice. She'd got back up, lost again, and eventually she had won. What she remembered most of all was that moment of bitterness. How much worse would that be, if you had never felt any pain at all? If you'd never had a scrape, never banged a knee? Unwanted sympathy welled up in the pit of her stomach. Vincent had had to learn to be Ergo. If it were the other way around, would he have done better?

"It's not always this hard," she said loudly, not turning around. "The pain doesn't last. Just don't fight it. You don't have to climb the ravine in one day. No one is going to die if you take a break." She drew on her training. "Let yourself feel the pain. Don't fight it. Know that it's there, know that it hurts. Accept it. And remember that it won't last forever." She paused, and then added, "and go to sleep. Rest is the best thing for healing."

Not always this hard. Well, at least she didn't say it could possibly get worse. He did snort at the 'no one is going to die' comment. People, frankly, had. Then again, he'd taken more time than he'd needed, too.

For a while Gabriel didn't say anything at all. He just took a few slow breaths, trying to wrestle his frustration under control, picking bits off the bread. In time, to his vague surprise, he found he'd finished it. Next on the agenda: sleep. He made to flop back with a sigh, remembered he was still wearing his pack, and with a huff found his way out of it, almost losing Re-l's blanket. His goggles he finally took off, and blinked up at the dark sky.

"How do I always wind up watching stars with you," he grumbled without heat, finding the cloth he'd been using all day to keep his headache down. Now he finally lay back, using the cloth as a shade so the rising sun didn't get in his eyes, and rearranged the blanket so it was over the both of them.

Re-l woke up much too late. It had become habit, in the last six days, to wake with the first hint of daylight, but when her eyes opened the sun was at least a hand-span above the horizon. She was very warm, and there was a heavy presence at her side. She wondered if Vincent had gotten lonely during the night, and was mildly impressed that he'd had the courage to try anything. Still, she could tease him about it when he woke up.

Then reality reasserted itself.

Re-l leapt to her feet, her tangled hair flying around her head like snakes. The blanket, caught around her legs, was jerked with her, and slid completely off Gabriel.

Inside her head a war was raging. Her hands were shaking, and part of her wanted to lash out. She spun around and kicked a nearby rock with all her strength, sending it flying off into the canyon, where it landed with a loud bang. A flock of birds awoke at the sound, springing into the air, their wings cracking out across the ravine.

Re-l strode away from the makeshift campsite, her hands still balled into tight fists, and knelt down by the fast flowing stream. She dunked her head under quickly and came up dripping. With water streaming down her face and filling her eyes she felt better, and she shook herself off vigorously. Her eyeshadow, washed away by the current, needed to be reapplyed. She flipped open her compact and began to work, using short even strokes that had become second nature to her.

The sudden movement and lack of cover made Gabriel jerk awake, though it completely left his brain behind. He was upright before he could think. The utter stiffness and aching pain in his body made him groan a moment later. He lifted a hand to press the cloth to his eyes, then take it away slowly.

At least the headache had dulled significantly. But his body? Shit. Even the slightest movement sent sparks of pain down his limbs and back. Not that it was terribly different to the previous mornings, except he'd never climbed down a fucking cliff then.

The clatter of the rock made him look up slowly, still a bit groggy, mostly just trying not to move. "I'm not that bad a face to wake up to, am I?" he said, managing a would-be winsome smile that slid off his face almost as quickly as he summoned it.

Re-l heard him from the water's edge, but she didn't reply immediately. She finished brushing the blue colour across her eyes, snapped her compact shut, tucked it into her waistband and stood up. She walked slowly back to Gabriel and looked down at him.

"Even if you were the most handsome man I'd ever met," she said, not adding and you aren't, "did you think I would be glad that you slept next to me without my permission?"

Her cold tone and her icy disdain were ruined somewhat by a loud gurgle from her stomach. She hadn't eaten now in over twenty-four hours. She bit her lip and turned away, forcing herself to accept and ignore the unpleasant sensation.

She had to be kidding. Gabriel's eyes narrowed. "In case you forgot, you told me to sleep," he pointed out irritably. "Not to mention it gets kind of cold at night around here, and you gave me your blanket. What, you wanted one of us to freeze? That would have been smart."

The gurgle broke the ice. Gabriel snorted his amusement, shook his head, then winced at the crick in his neck. He rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully, but then decided that snapping up some food wouldn't be a good idea; he didn't even know if he could manage it and still make it real enough. Living things were significantly more complicated than even a bridge.

"C'mere," he said, too weary for a real argument, and carefully reached down to rummage in his bag. He pulled out a couple of tightly sealed bags. "I nabbed a few extra things from the bakery before we left," he said with a slow, one-shouldered shrug, handing one to her. "Mostly that bread Dario makes. Keeps well and it's small. And some chocolate chips. Figured we could use the energy. And seeing as how you went ahead to give someone else your food ..." He rolled his eyes, but the twitch of his lips wasn't mocking at all.

Re-l shrugged.

"I would have been fine," she said. "You seem to be under the impression that I'm altruistic, but allow me to disabuse you of that notion. I would never have given up something I needed for myself. I'm simply stronger than you are right now."

The minute he mentioned food she glared at him, as though he had committed a social faux pas, which in her eyes it probably was. She did sit down though.

"The same thing goes for food. I've survived on less for longer." That had been a memorable week, though she hadn't been exerting herself nearly so much.

Re-l considered refusing the bread on principle, but her stomach had other ideas. She grabbed a roll and bit into it greedily, swallowing it down in huge chunks. It hit her empty stomach with an unpleasant gurgle, but she was too hungry to notice.

"And you're the one who was reaming me out for being an idiot," Gabriel said with a roll of his eyes. "Just because you can doesn't meant you have to if you've got the chance not to. Wasn't that part of the point of your little speech last night?"

The fact that she went at the bread like she was starving only made him smirk. He'd already eaten soggy bread and didn't feel like any more quite yet, so he re-opened the half-empty bag of chocolate chips instead. Dessert was best first.

Re-l tensed. The answer she wanted to give wouldn't come. She didn't have the right words to say it.

"It doesn't matter. Just don't do it again." She gulped down the last of the bread and stood up. She grabbed the blanket and shook it out, getting rid of dust and crumbs before folding it and adding it to her pack, which she swung onto her back.

"Are you still hurt?" she said, looking down at Gabriel.

Dad, she was irritating and demanding and presumptive, and it was kind of hot. It reminded Gabriel of Kali. Not that he let this on; rather, he just rolled his eyes again, tossed a few last chocolate chips in his mouth and rolled the bag back up again.

"Nope, unless you count the fact my body is one giant ache," he said glibly, then forced himself to his feet with a groan, trying to stretch to loosen his muscles. "So we heading across for a bit first, or straight up?"

Re-l mouth may have hung open for the slightest fraction of a second before she remembered to close it, snapping her teeth together and grinding them.

"I want to get to the city," she said, "so unless we run into problems, straight up it is."

She set off without a glance backwards, letting her legs swallow up the distance. She did not look back. If he was determined to follow her, he would have to keep up himself.

She was stiff and tired, and her muscles screamed in protest, but Re-l ignored them. It felt good to be walking, good to be using all of herself. The rocky and barren floor of the ravine disappeared beneath her feet, and the other side loomed closer and closer. Re-l began searching for a route up, and at last she spotted a narrow trail, suitable for little more than animals, veering sharply up the cliff. It was hard, but it looked managable, especially if there were two people for the difficult bits. Reconsidering her previous estimation, Re-l slowed and waited for Gabriel to catch up.

"Do you think you can climb that? If I help you?"

"No arguments here." He was still trying to rub his shoulders into submission as she walked off, but after a moment he hauled up his pack and followed, a little more slowly, but dogged.

He was already peering up at the cliff when she spoke. "I could do that," he agreed, shading his eyes and wincing a little in the sunlight. His head was still a bit tender. His sharp eyes picked out the trouble spots. "Actually, I should be able to construct some climbing tools or handholds. If they only need to last ten minutes or so it won't take much out of me."

And small parts would be infinitely easier than that blasted bridge.

Re-l looked seriously at him. He wasn't in great shape, though the night's sleep had helped a lot.

"If you hurt yourself," Re-l said, "I'm going to feel unfairly responsible, so are you sure you can manage that? Because I can get you up without climbing gear."

She continued to study him, and then quickly raised a hand and dug it into his trapezius muscles, right where she thought the most tension was.

The pressure right there made him yelp, his back instinctively arching as he tried to escape the sudden searing pain. He yanked himself away from her, staggering a little because of his pack, and turned with a scowl fighting a rueful grimace. "Y'know if you wanted to give me a massage, all you had to do was say so."

He rubbed his shoulder, squinting at her soul as if to gauge whether that was to make a point or if she'd actually been trying to help him, then sighed and shook his head. "I can manage it, okay? If I can actually pull my own weight then I'm damn well going to pull it. A few bits and bobs to help us through the rough parts won't put me out."

[ooc: Because I'm horribly forgetful, let's just pretend he's been seeing her general-soul but hasn't needed to comment on it, and they haven't quite met eye-to-eye. Unless you don't mind him having seen a flash or two and just keeping them in mind.]

"Just checking," Re-l said. "I like to anticipate unpleasant surprises."

She let him rub his shoulder, dropping into a crouch to stretch out her own legs.

"Do you want to make the equipment now, or as we go along?"

[OOC: Oops I forgot about that too. Whichever you prefer, but I'll try to set up a moment of intense recollection so he can get a good solid flash later. XD.]

"You'd say the same for the pleasant ones, I'll bet," Gabriel grumbled, rolling his shoulders and glancing back up the path. "As we go. I could make something we don't need and then it'd just be a waste. We'll see how the path goes first."

It also meant that he could gauge how long they needed to last. He'd managed to actually control that, with some of his latest constructs. He'd needed time-delayed fade-aways before; they were useful things. "Who's going first?"

[ooc: I think I'll go with a minor flash of a proxy and the sunlight, since they're not new info he'd want to comment on. Otherwise, sounds good!]

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continuing into the next morning, yes?

Ufufufu but of course

excellent. :3

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