snowblindrpg | [log] I JUST DIIIIIED IN YOUR ARMS TONIIIIIIGHT [closed]

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[log] I JUST DIIIIIED IN YOUR ARMS TONIIIIIIGHT [closed]

Characters: Alfie Solomons, Emily Kaldwin, Fiona, Royce Melborn
Location building 41
Date: evening of 157 through morning of 158
Summary: Alfie bleeds to death in the blood house, for maximum Snowhell fun
Warnings: graphic injury, death and dying

Step into the only remaining room in this house and you'll be in for a shock--at first blush, it looks like you've stepped into a room that has blood all over the floor and walls. Look closer, though, and it's actually paint. This was once an artist's studio, judging by the canvases stacked up in the corner. It seems like there were paintings on the canvases once, but now they're muddy or blacked out entirely by thick paint. Some of the paint on the walls has been scraped away, revealing yet more paint. Some of the canvases have had their paint scraped off, or have been taken apart entirely.

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[There's only one other time before that Emily visits, and it isn't for very long because Alfie being hurt this way reminds her a lot of watching her mother get stabbed in the stomach while she was being hauled off by assassins. She at least apologizes before she leaves.

When she comes back the second time, Alfie doesn't have very much longer left. In the time, she's powered through the growing ache to her arm and finished a small drawing for him in the notebook he gave her. She tried not to be sloppy, but it shows here and there; the pain in her hand, the fear in her heart.

For a moment, she holds it up for him.] I drew you something. It's all of us, and Miss Fiona, too. [Tifa, Royce, Alfie in his hat, her, Fiona. Standing somewhere that's decidedly not Norfinbury. Flowers. Green grass. A bright sun and blue sky. Not Dunwall. Not London or Camden either.] Here. [She puts it on him in a way that covers the wound so neither of them have to look at it.]

You look really tired. Do you want me to read the book Duster gave to me?

[He doesn't blame her, and he tells her as much when she leaves the first time. He wishes this weren't happening with her here, especially in a one-room house. There's nowhere she can go to escape. Kids shouldn't have to deal with this sort of thing.

His breathing is noticeably more shallow when she comes back over. He doesn't try to speak. He just gives the tiniest of nods.]

Okay. We're already a few chapters ahead, but-- [Her legs fold Indian-style beneath her, and she props the book on her lap.] It's about a girl and her dragon. Her name is Jordi, and the dragon's name is Verath.

They met when the dragon had eaten some of the nectar that was going to make alcohol. It was accidentally burning down a part of a town, and Jordi had to figure out how to stop it.

Now they're on the run from a mean creature collector and some Hunters. [Briefly, she glances at Alfie, then goes back to the book.] On the second night, Jordi and Verath decide to make camp in a glade outside of Goldlea...

I do wish you didn't have to be trapped here.

[He doesn't mean to interrupt, but the state he's in makes it easier for words to just tumble out.]

It's okay. [She doesn't look up, fingers flicking the corner of one of the pages. She won't look up because the backs of her eyes sting a little, and she doesn't know if it's the all over soreness again or something else.]

It's... like Dunwall. And maybe Corvo is looking for me, and maybe he will come and rescue me like he did last time. If he doesn't soon... that's okay.

You all are nicer than the others anyway, except maybe Callista. She was waiting for her uncle. She said she asked Corvo to help him because he was a good man, and the bad men who had me kidnapped were going to kill him.

[His head is swimming. He hears her words, but can't quite parse them. He hears "Corvo", and "Callista", and "uncle", and it gets him to thinking about his own family, far way in another universe. He sighs.]

[After a few moments, she says in a soft voice:] Is it scarier when it's not the monsters?

No.

[He is a little bit scared, honestly. He's afraid of not coming back. But while this is undoubtedly a slower, more painful, worse death, it's not scarier than being chased by an anomaly.]

No, it's not.

[She hasn't seen an anomaly yet.] I don't think so. [Her disagreement is strangely emotional, and when she finally lifts her eyes to look at Alfie, they're glassy.] I think this is scarier.

Because we didn't know. Because it was just a stick. Because... that's what happened to everyone I knew.

[He lifts a hand to try to pat her arm, but misses, catching air instead.]

[Truth be told, a lot of people Emily had known have died, but she has never watched any of them die. Even her mother; it had been Corvo to hold the woman and watch her die. Emily only saw her mother get stabbed.

She has never seen the life expire from anyone, and if this is it, then it's absolutely more terrifying than any monster, than any great whale, or rough sailing sea, or leviathan.] I thought we could make you better. Maybe with some special medicine from the pharmacy, like the elixir in Dunwall, but--

Duster said you're dying. [She takes his hand and holds it by the fingers on both sides.] I'm sorry we can't give you a nice funeral. I didn't get to see Mother's either.

[He gives her fingers a squeeze.]

Nah. Funerals-- we've got a special way for them to be done.

[His voice is weak and halting, but he gets the words out.]

None of you know it.

We do, too. [Just so he knows--Jews aren't the only ones with special ways!]

Do you pray? Like you did in the room that time. What do you say?

Shouldn't say it now. Bad luck.

[After all, he's hoping to come back.]

Okay. [But she seems worried.] How are we going to know what to say... after? What if we don't say it, and you can't go to the Cosmos, or the Void, or anywhere because we didn't?

God'll understand.

[Maybe, probably.]

[For a moment, she looks over Alfie's sallow face. She wants to ask, Who's God? because they have the Cosmos, and everyone hopes they are going there, but you don't have to pray, and you don't have to talk to someone called God.] Okay.

Yes. God'll understand.

[He doesn't want to be here, on this floor. If he's going to die, he wants to do it at home, in the place he's lived all his life - not in this awful place.

He reaches to pat Emily's arm again, and this time, he manages it.]

I'm sorry, Mister Alfie.

[Her arms reach up to twine around his own, to hold it like it might disappear.] Duster said he came back. He said you come back when you die.

So you'll come back, and we'll be waiting.

[He closes his eyes again.]

You don't have to watch, if you don't want to.

I know.

[She doesn't let go of his arm, but treats it gently.] I'll stay with you. So you won't be by yourself.

[I mean, let's be real, Royce and Fiona are probably like inches away right now too.]

Thanks, sweetheart.

You're welcome. [She thinks she would want someone to stay with her if she died, too. Corvo in particular, but here, in this place, Royce or Alfie or Tifa.] Duster says people come back, so I know you will.

And we'll be here. And I'll have another picture for you.

[He exhales, then nods at the book in her hand. She can go on reading if she wants.]

[After a moment or two, Emily settles back with the book half in part of her lap and Alfie's arm half in the other.] For now, Jordi and Verath are safe in the glade. The firepit they make for later in the night is tiny, hopefully unnoticeable. Jordi bathes in a stream, and they eat the violet berries of a thorny bush instead of the poisonous red ones hanging low from the tree.

Jordi tells Verath about living in Mallowmill, about the light-flies in the early fall, the pinefruit pies in the winter, the feeling of Mother's linen sheets after they had dried in the spring sun.

And Jordi tells Verath about their family debt, about being given to a sorcerer so it was forgiven, and about crying the first night on the cot in the small room in the attic.

And Jordi thinks, even though Verath can't talk, the dragon understands.

[But Goldlea to the west isn't as pleasant as the name sounds, it turns out. Goldlea is full of radical God-fearing people. Paladins seek out and destroy all who give themselves over to the Blight, magic. Dragons are guardians of it. Swayers. Untrustworthy snakes, sinking their claws into the innocent. Wicked, cunning.

A nosy villager harvesting in the glade spills their whereabouts to the Ivory Mark. Verath can smell the blue flame of their coarse coal as the paladins come for them.]

Edited (casually forgets to end my post) 2016-09-07 16:45 (UTC)

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devoutish - 2016-09-07 17:13 (UTC) - Expand

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empireofrats - 2016-09-07 18:20 (UTC) - Expand

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