[log] And You've Receded Into Loam [closed]

[rubikscomplex]

Characters: Gregory House, Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, Ecks, Jared Rhys, James Wilson
Location: Building 310 and the Columbarium area
Date: Day 321 and 323
Summary: House, Hannibal, and Will meeting an anomaly and then meeting up with Ecks and co at the Columbarium.
Warnings: Typical House and Hannibal-related warnings

Comments

Building 310

[rubikscomplex]

[This house is green on the Geiger counter. It's fairly intact, too, with a living room, kitchen, dining room, and half bath on the first floor, two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor, and an attic. The first two floors look like a normal enough house, though the beds have no bedsheets. The door to the attic, however, has a black prophet's symbol on the outside of the door. Going in, there are a series of shackles attached to the wall. There's no keys for them, but the insides are rusted and stained with blood. Anyone with the Eye app active in the attic will find they can lock and unlock the shackles via the app.]

[rubikscomplex]

Lock the windows and hold them down. Now.

[The command is snapped as House wedges himself up against the door. They're out well ahead of the deer anomaly thing, but he's not taking any chances. It's still relatively early, and if it doesn't wander away, it's going to be a long several hours until lockdown. The doctor is panting, furious--beyond furious--and scared. The only anomaly he's ever been eaten by is the one in the morgue. That had all been much too close for comfort. His gaze finds Hannibal. Will is getting a pass for being a basket case. For now, anyway. If he lets that damn thing in, House will be blaming him for his second bout of idiocy.

He's furious and that doesn't particularly help House's self-preservation instinct for the predators inside this building with him.]

You ever ignore my warnings and restrain me like that again, Lecter, I will make it my mission in life to find a way to make your life hell here.

[House might not be on the same level as Will and Hannibal, but if there's one thing he excels at, it's finding ways to get under someone's skin... often to his own personal detriment. But as long as they're suffering with him, he can live (or die) with that.]

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ Once he had been grabbed and physically yanked away from the creature, something resembling reason and a self-preservation instinct had kicked in. As such, Will didn't even grouse at being given sharp orders. He set himself to the task of checking every single window to make sure the locks were engaged. ]

Do anomalies climb? [ He asked, looking at where this house seemed to have access to a second floor.

As for House's sharp words towards Hannibal? They were both big boys and didn't need him playing referee. Besides, better to let them have it out than sit and stew.

...

No cannibal pun intended. ]

[rubikscomplex]

Sometimes. Deerly Beloved doesn't look like a climber, though. More like pry open the doors and windows-er. They're at least marginally limited to the abilities of the apparent form they take.

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

I'll go check the upstairs windows anyway. [ Will decided. Better to check than end up with a nasty surprise coming down the stairs.

He paused at the base of the steps and looked back at the other two men, his expression concerned. ]

If you two have to indulge in bloodshed ... trying to work it into an experiment or something.

[ The younger man's expression as the words left his mouth suggested he understood how lame that sounded and after exhaling a breath, he shook his head and scurried up the steps.

Sooner he checked the windows .... ]

[tablewithoutpity]

[Once they were inside Hannibal was already moving to lock the windows and assess other ways of barricading the entrances. . He didn't flinch one bit at House's words. Quite the opposite. He smiled, laughed quietly, as he glanced out the window at the creature, taking in its form, so deeply significant to Will, and therefore to himself.]

You must feel quite powerless, to make such a useless threat. You've never seen this creature, and you have no idea the significance it holds to Will.

Morning 322 - For Will

[rubikscomplex]

[House spends a rather hellish night waiting for lockdown to come, then just curling up against the only wall with no windows or doors. The anomaly keeps scratching, keeps tapping and he could probably go upstairs to get away from it, but as irrational as it is, he wants the maximum distance possible between himself and the attic. House knows what this building is. A part of him is curious if the results would be the same now that he has the Prophet brand. Would the triggers see him as one of their own, rather than aligned with Andromeda?

It's an interesting question, but not one he's mentally prepared to explore for the moment. Next time, he tells himself. He'll check next time when Will and Hannibal aren't there to witness it.

Still, he manages to catch some fitful shuteye, trying to focus on the sounds of Will and Hannibal... doing their thing upstairs, rather than the stag anomaly outside. The focused eavesdropping at least lends itself to some snark in the morning when House hears Will descending. The doctor has moved to the couch and looks like death warmed over, but he still calls out in a chipper tone:]

Hey, girlfriend! Hope you had your boy use a condom. I just ran out of STD and pregnancy test kits.

All the facepalming

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ Waking in the morning, Will had indulged in a nice ice shower, complete with whatever soap (maybe dish soap, that lovely Dawn scent) he had available to clean up. The cold shower, while cleansing, had done nothing for the aches in certain areas. A reminder of the pleasures from the night before, but also necessitating a certain delicacy in his stride as he made his way down the steps.

Right into the spotlight for House's snark.

Setting his hand on the edge of the wall, the ex-profiler looked over towards the doctor and tried to pretend he wasn't blushing. It wasn't as if House hadn't heard them get up to mischief as the opportunity presented itself, but Will was always a little self-conscious about being overheard. ]

Tell the truth. You got your medical degree out of a crackerjack box. [ Fight snark with snark. No comment about the condom however. ]

[rubikscomplex]

Psh! Crackerjack degrees are so 1980. I got mine turning in boxtops.

[He notes the lack of response about the condoms.]

At least tell me you used more than spit for lube.

[House is going to be mildly concerned if Will is that much of a masochist.]

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

I still had some of the lotion you shared with me a few days ... or so ago. [ It may have been a few weeks, Will really was losing all sense of time. Still, he walked across the floor towards House. ]

Though more appropriate lubrication would probably have been best. [ Both for the fact that it had been Will's first time with such activities and Hannibal was not ... small.

Will considered horrifying House with those sorts of details, but decided that really was TMI on both their parts. ]

You sleep down here all night?

[rubikscomplex]

[House eyes Will.]

You suck at being not-straight.

[Clearly you should have been more prepared for this moment, Will. The doctor reaches for his pack and pulls out a tin of petroleum jelly. That gets tossed to the ex-profiler.]

And no, I snuck upstairs to get a few clips for my upcoming porno: "I Could Just Eat You Up." [A pause.] Also considering "Snow Light, Snow Bite."

Building 300, 313, 314

[rubikscomplex]

Building 300
[This place, yellow on the Geiger counter, is more of a former house than a house. It's a mostly collapsed pile of wood and metal. Still, the door is standing, and going through it reveals an interior that's dark and empty but still closes up at night. There's a trap door near the western side of what remains of the interior.]

Building 313
[A long, straight tunnel deep in the ground. The tunnel is narrow, as the walls have been lined with well-cleaned, neatly stacked human bones. The skulls have been mounted in straight lines on the walls with stakes through their eye sockets. There is a ladder on either end of this place.]

Building 314
[The only entrance to this building is through a trap door that opens into a large morgue. There are two wide walls for body drawers and multiple cremation rooms. Leaving the morgue and going upstairs reveals a large structure of marble and winding hallways, the walls lined with small square plaques. This is a columbarium, and each plaque represents a dead person. The years vary, but an examination reveals that the last year accounted for is 2050.

That's not the most common plaque date, though. The most common, with the top three floors filled up, is "UNKNOWN". The building is ten floors in total.]

building 300 - open to first taker

[ecks]

[Ecks jumps up from where she's been sitting on her duffel full of stuffed animals the moment she hears a sound outside. She knows full well that they are expecting a visit from friends, but she's been rattled by every sound and shadow the last few days. She slips around near to what remains of the front door, shovel in hand, and is waiting silently for whomever enters first. Better hope she recognizes you.]

grabs the ticket!

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ His mop of messy curls might help him stand out?

Otherwise, Will may or may not be readily recognizable. ]

the dice say she recognizes him!

[ecks]

[Ecks watches quietly as he crosses the threshold, weapon at the ready. If she gave herself time, perhaps she would recognize his silhouette, remember his gait and his hair and realize that he is one of the people they are expecting. In the moment, though, there is mostly the dread sense that this, here is the one that's watched her from windows and doorways, rifled through her bags when she wasn't looking, haunted their steps.

She lunges forward and makes a neat jab at his kidney with the tip of her ash shovel.]

\o/

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ Will did no possess Hannibal's near preternatural reflexes. As such it was usually easy to get the drop on him and this time was no exception.

He didn't cry out, though a small grunt passed his lips as the jab landed in his lower back and drove him forward stumbling down to his knees. He twisted, lifting an arm to protect his head from any follow-up blows that might be coming towards his head, but otherwise he stayed down. ]

meant to edit out that header when I changed my mind....

[ecks]

[He goes down and stays down, and Ecks doesn't linger on his form longer than it takes to see so. She turns smoothly back toward the door, poised to lunge and strike at whoever is next behind him.]

Building 313

[rubikscomplex]

This place is like something outta Indiana Jones.

[This observation brought to you by the scruffy doctor eyeing the skulls with his tablet light. Equating it to a movie (and a hit of Vicodin) is the easiest way to deal with the horror of this place. House has been through this area once before, but he'd just revived and been out of food. Stopping to smell the roses or examine the cult victim bones hadn't been at the top of his to-do list.]

Re: Building 313

[tablewithoutpity]

Or the catacombs of Paris. Without the stakes through the eyes.

[Hannibal is walking slowly through the tunnel, looking at the bones, examining them, looking for marks that indicated illness, or injury, pre- or post-mortem.]

[rubikscomplex]

[House's expression turns just a little warier for a moment as he checks to see if anyone else is in the tunnel with them. Lucky him. All alone. He smooths it over and decides to focus on the bones.]

Or Alexandria. [Paris isn't on the list of places House had been dragged around to as a kid, but Egypt has more than its fair share of catacombs.] The real question is, what inspired them. Most of the cult crap we see, it's... messy. [House traces a finger over one of the stakes.]

Bodies dumped in graves, carved up. This is methodical, meticulous... elegant. [He doesn't particularly like that the last word comes to mind, but he can't deny it.] The cultists had their own morgue, so what made the Columbarium special? Unless it was... I dunno homage to the victims from the nukes. Implies the cult was thinking about something other than the Prophet.

[tablewithoutpity]

Mmm. The stakes driven through the eyes would seem a clear reference to the Prophet.

[He leans in close and inhales, taking in the scent of the old bones.]

I do wonder, sometimes, if what we are seeing is actually present. Or if our surroundings are merely electrical impulses fed into our consciousness.

[He reached out and ran his fingertips over the fused suture of the closest skull.]

Action

[sleight_of_fate]

[Rhys had seen bones before, seen death and nightmare collections that would make the Mutter Museum cringe. The lairs and precious things if saints and monsters alike.

Back home, he did a lot of fighting. It seems like here, he's mostly just numb, but at least he's hard to surprise.

The catacombs are only different because of the care and quantity, but he still carefully avoids touching anything. Contact makes the impressions worse, that's a hard habit to break.

He wasn't going to come down here. He was going to leave House alone because what did they really have to say to each other? But he was down here anyway, because...

Because.]

If you go to Prague, there's a church there that's got the chandeliers and arches to match. Even the altars.

Switching to prose! <<

[rubikscomplex]

"Sedlec Ossuary," House replies. He glances over briefly at Rhys, registering him as a non-threat and returning his attention to the bones. House has no problem reaching out and touching. A part of him that he knows is the MN Poisoning wants him to lick them, as well... maybe gnaw on the stakes a little. "I've seen pictures. You been?"

Yay prose!

[sleight_of_fate]

"Always wanted to, but they kept turning down my Gold Card application." He shakes his head, though he looks pleasantly surprised that House knows it.

Threatening, no. Rhys just looks tired, huddled in his too-big Army coat as he looks around, then moves to inspect the skulls a little more closely.

"I've seen other boneyards, though. Sculptures, altars. Pictures never quite have the same impact. Sometimes it's art, sometimes it's horrible, sometimes it's horrible art." He gives a tight smile, then shakes his head.

"I think we are in rats’ alley

Where the dead men lost their bones."

Overnight/Morning 323/324: The Columbarium

[sleight_of_fate]

Rhys is good at vanishing when he needs to. Especially when he's wrapped up in heavy thoughts, desperate to fade into nothing where he can finally breathe again.

Some people might have heard the argument in the bone tunnel earlier in the evening. If they hadn't, then Rhys is simply somewhere else after a certain part of the night, retreated to the far corners of the Columbarium to pace and try to sleep. Curled up in his coat and sleeping bag until the dark gets to him and he lights his vanilla candle for the hour that he dares, taking small comfort in the scent and the warm light.

Very early in the morning, looking ragged and weary from a restless night, he's packed all his gear and picking restlessly at his clothes as he waits for lockdown to end, for those precious few minutes when he can slip out ahead of the others. Clearly, he has plans that no longer involve the group.

For now, anyway.