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

Gabriel's head was aching before not much longer; the goggles protected him only so much from the sun's glare, and he kept his face down to protect it better. He had to lean on the cliff, panting, but continued doggedly onwards despite the burn in his legs.

When he heard Re-l's feet hit the track he leaned his shoulder against the cliff so he could turn, awkwardly, to look at her. He grinned weakly. "At least I can say for sure your boots aren't going to fail on you as badly as your timing."

Re-l sighed, leaning back against the wall in imitation of him. She could feel her knee stinging beneath her clothes, but that wasn't what worried her. Right now, the look on Gabriel's face was of more concern.

"Using that power really eats at you," she said. "Do you need to take a break?"

She dug her heels into the ground and leant out over the ledge. The ravine spread out before them, the bottom so far away that only the largest streams could be seen gleaming in the sunlight. Judging by the other cliff, they were about halfway up. It was slow work, and for a moment Re-l wondered if they would ever make it to the top.

Truthfully, it was as much the sheer exertion of climbing the trail was that exhausting him as the use of his power. Then again, his head was ringing slightly and he couldn't tell if it was the sun or the fatigue or how ever many steps he'd made to get this far up.

He hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. "That would be nice," he admitted, and this time the exhaustion was plain in his voice. At least the track was wide enough for a sit down, not all that far along; when he made it there he slid down the wall to sit without even taking his pack off.

Re-l dropped down beside him, sliding her legs out.

"It's strange," she said. "With all the power that the city has, with all that they've been able to do to us, it seems ridiculous to make us trek across such a dangerous world alone. They must have airships; why couldn't we just take one of those? What goal could they have in pushing us so hard?"

She couldn't admit to herself how worried she was. They had no idea of the trail ahead, and for all her bravado, she would be totally lost without Gabriel's power.

"Damnit," she said, kicking a loose pebble over the edge and listening to the sound it made as it bounced down.

How could she be so weak? Was it really impossible for a mere human to make any difference in the world? First Vincent, and now this angel; she was always being protected. It infuriated her.

"The Workers are probably just goons," Gabriel said, taking deep gulps of air and blinking rapidly in a futile effort to keep the buzz out of his ears. "As far as they know, maybe the landscape's not that difficult. Or they can't afford a guide, or they think this'll help us remember, or whatever. As far as the Caretaker's concerned, pretty sure he's just playing with our heads.

He stretched out his legs, letting them hang over the edge of the path, and leaned his head back, resisting the urge to close his eyes. If he'd only known what Re-l was thinking, he would have laughed. Humanity was what made all the difference. That was why both the forces of Heaven and Hell used Earth as their medium for war.

Re-l gave herself another five minutes, enjoying the sun on her face and the wind at her back, and then nudged Gabriel with her foot.

"We should keep going," she said. "The sooner we get to the city the better."

She stood up and stretched, feeling her limbs crackle.

"I am due a great deal of pampering when we reach the city," she said, sniffing haughtily. For a moment it was easy to remember the woman inside her who had been the "princess" of Romdeau.

The nudge actually snapped Gabriel awake, and he pushed himself up, blinking the sleep away. "Right," he muttered, wincing a little at the mild throb that had settled into his temples. "If they don't have a fully-staffed five-star hotel waiting for us there, I'm going to smite someone."

At least the rest had helped. Not that Gabriel felt energised, exactly, but he felt better able to keep going.

He wasn't sure how far it was up the track when he snapped up his third stepping-stone and a wave of dizziness swept over him. He swayed, his vision burning white and gravity turning around him, but he simply could not tell which way was up. Or where the edge of the path was.

The sensation made panic stab at him, and he gropped desperately for a handhold in the cliff.

[OOC: Sorry for lack of tagging, real life got suddenly busy. Thank goodness for the weekend. Also I couldn't figure out a way to write this without coercing Gabriel a little, so feel free to counter-write it.]

Re-l followed more closely behind Gabriel than before, nervous that she would miss her timing on the third gap. It was hard work, climbing the steep trail, and she had to concentrate carefully on the placement of her feet, using every bump and dent in the rock to keep her grip. The sun slanted into her eyes at an irritating angle, blinding her to everything but the dull stone under her feet. The angel's back was a dark lump in front of her, and everything else was white.

The third piece of stone appeared with a finger snap, but Re-l hardly had time to notice, because Gabriel had lurched and his fingers were closing half on stone and half on air, reaching out blindly for the wall.

Re-l did the only thing she could think of. She dropped his arm over her shoulder, and, half-carrying him, moved quickly forward. She had no idea how long the stone would last, and it was obvious that he couldn't risk making another.

"How troublesome," Re-l muttered, her breath sliding quickly in and out of her lungs. They were halfway across now, and she had no idea how much longer they had. She pushed onwards, ignoring every twinge of her legs.

They were almost across when Re-l felt the rock shift. Her heart hammered agonisingly in her chest, adrenaline surged through her veins and she threw herself forward, still gripping Gabriel tightly, and let herself slam into the ground. All the air left her lungs in one great rush, and she lay on the mercifully solid rock, totally stunned.

His ears were ringing. Re-l's grip on his shoulder was the only steadying force in the archangel's world right then; he staggered forward to try and help her as best as he could, and had no choice but to trust she'd guide him back onto the track. He could never have imagined that feeling of weightlessness could possibly be so frightening.

Gabriel caught himself half on the cliff but sank immediately to the ground, clutching the stone as if that would stop the world from turning on its axis. He tried to think--how many steps had that been? Third from their rest stop, he couldn't tell how many from the start.

"Hey," he said, breathing hard, shaking his head as if that would clear it. His vision was still white and the sun took care of the rest. "Still with me?" Well, he hadn't heard any screaming or squishing sounds. He reached out, searching for Re-l's shoulder.

Re-l concentrated on her breathing. There was a tight pain in her chest, as though her lungs had shrunk to half their normal size, and she didn't seem to have the air to form words. She pushed herself up a little and gripped Gabriel's arm in lieu of speaking.

Slowly her lungs refilled, and the pain ebbed away.

"Are you alright?" She shuddered as she drew in more air. "I don't think I can do that again."

Her head sank down on her chest, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheekbones.

Gabriel gripped her arm and exhaled slowly, trying to take control of his own breathing. He laughed and the sound was brittle.

"I don't think I can, either." He wasn't exactly talking about being dragged dizzily across a gap in the path. With a light thud he leaned his head back against the cliff, blinking as his vision slowly settled. "How far do we have to go?"

Re-l groaned and stood up slowly, letting go of Gabriel to look around. Her eyes winced against the bright light, but as the glare slowly faded she managed to get a look at their new location.

"We're much higher up than we were before," she said, and felt a wave of cold pass over her as she realised how close they had come to falling. "Almost at the top, I think." She turned to look up along the trail. "There's one more difficult bit. The path narrows again. But it's not for long, and then it widens out hugely. That must be where the cliff ends."

One of her legs buckled, cramping painfully, and she collapsed against the cliff-side, letting herself slide down into a sitting position again so she could massage her calf. As she worked she looked over to Gabriel, and her eyebrows pulled sharply together.

"I shouldn't have let you do all that. We could have found another way."

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.

"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.

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."

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.

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?"

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'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.

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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you're fine, no worries! :D

Re: you're fine, no worries! :D

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