[log] Event: Metamorphosis, Part Three

[snowblindmods]

Characters: everyone
Location: all around town; note location in subject line
Date: Night 415 onward; note time in subject line
Summary: They break out and they wake up.
Warnings: extreme body horror, unreality, eldritch horror, absolutely definitely 100% include warnings in subject lines/before your comment if the subject line isn't long enough

Comments

B - cw disease, rotting alive, respiratory distress, sundry bodily fluids

[bookofnope]

He's tired. Hunting is all he knows, but he's tired. His form is slow now. The rot takes its toll. He would rest if he could, but that of all things, he is denied. Death but never rest, never peace.

Beckett isn't surprised or anything. It's what he always gets. It's what he deserves.

So when he sees Rhys, when he realizes what he sees, he stops. Confused, staring, suddenly overwhelmed by the sadness that lies under and powers his rage. Earth. There might be nothing he misses more than the clean smell of earth. Where he used to sleep, back when he's still been just an ordinary monster.

"Why couldn't I have been you?" There's no anger when he speaks. Just sadness now.

CW: Noisy Black

[sleight_of_fate]

Rhys feels Beckett approach before the words come, so he's not completely taken by surprise. Nor does the smell bother him: it's not exactly nice, but in an earthy way it's comforting, like a heavy musk. The dirt in him recognizes decay as a friend, and the waves of falling earth shift restlessly in response.

He also hears the sadness, and that actually hurts a little. Rhys has not come out too badly, except for losing his sight. He feels bad for others who have less helpful transmutations.

"Hey, Beckett." pebbles fall in a spray to the frozen ground, and crawl slowly back toward the pillars of Rhys's feet. "...I don't know. It might just be a personal thing? Like the Sinners, when they cut us up." His tail is still tangled up in the piles of dirt around his lower body, but he's not worried about that. Not losing the tail to frostbite has been an ongoing fight and this way, he knows it's safe.

"I can't see you, sorry. Just so you know." His face turned toward the source of the sound anyway, though, with his blank turquoise orbs. "But are you...well, not even gonna say 'Okay' but. Where are you heading?"

[bookofnope]

Briefly, Beckett peers at the arrangement of dirt and rocks. He wouldn't normally call it a pleasant thing to be, exactly, but it doesn't seem cold at least. It seems, if not steady, then grounded, as it were. Earth is life. He can't even resent it that.

He half settles, half just collapses at Rhys's feet. His own little pile of decay.

"I'm sure it is. Personal, I mean. Tailored. What we've earned..." briefly he fades into a morbid silence. If this is what he deserves then why all the furious envy? It feels empty now.

"I went after them. Angel, Rhys, House... I don't know what I was hoping to get. There's no point going anywhere."

[sleight_of_fate]

Rhys isn't exactly sure what to say to that. he's not even sure where he is, never mind how close to the Bunker or other people he is. Wandering aimlessly has sort of been the order of the day...along with being grateful that he doesn't seem to feel the cold anymore, even the killing cold of overnight lockdown.

"My magic is earth-based. Some of the best time I ever spent was gardening, or living in the woods with these huge redwoods everywhere, or just, you know. Lying in the grass, or the sand at the beach. So That might be part of it," he admits reluctantly. While it seems great for him, it sucks for Beckett.

After a second, he makes a decision and just sits where he is, close to Beckett by fact of where Beckett folded. Company and solidarity, that he can give.

"I don't think we're...well. I know it's kind of obvious but maybe we can reset it somehow. Maybe it will heal, like the stuff that's been done to us before. We should try and get tablets, get in touch with ADMIN or someone who would know."

[bookofnope]

"And you think that could be it - the magic?" For a moment Beckett actually perks up very slightly, if only just in tone of voice. Maybe it's the smell of the earth that reminds him he can, or at least once could feel better. Maybe it's his own memories of the woods, their green freedom, running or flying with all the careless joy of the animal mind and none of the demands of the Beast. But then, of course, he remembers that he's never going to have that again.

The little pile seems to crumble and shrink even further. Even his miasma of black awfulness looks like it's slumping low to the ground.

"You got what you love. I got... this." What they deserve, indeed. "Resetting won't change it. It's something more essential... the physical might change, but it won't make any real difference."

[sleight_of_fate]

"I'm not sure. I'm just guessing, honestly. It's the earth, and nature, but it's also burial. Going into the ground is pretty final for most of us and I'm trying not to think about that. Pretend that it's a good thing so I don't start screaming." He wishes he had something more reassuring to say to Beckett. He rubs his dirt-encrusted fingers together, trying to feel exactly where he stops and the earth begins, but can't. "This place messes with us. Always. Even when it gives us something kind of...not terrible, it's still terrible somehow."

Like the hunger and isolation. The blindness. The occasional terrible, dizzying feeling of suffocation. Even from that moment in the office building when Rhys realized he had a tail and horns, he knew that this place would always find what was personal and then cut to the quick there.

he stares out into space with his blank eyes, trying to formulate what to say. Beckett's miasma of disease doesn't bother him, he's barely aware of it, but he knows the vampire got a raw deal. And that just sucks.

"I hope there's a way to undo it, but I don't know. We just gotta get each other through as best we can until someone finds an answer, that's all that I can think of right now."

[bookofnope]

"Oh, you might as well start screaming." Beckett's voice is low. Small. He'd be screaming too if it didn't just inevitably lead to non-stop coughing. He doesn't really see what the other options are. If you're at the point where you realize the only sensible course of action left is to start screaming, you probably know you're not going to have a reason to stop.

Maybe crying. There is crying. He is feeling that option. It's as though the horror has passed and left a quieter, deeper awareness in its wake, not only that this is wrong but that it didn't have to be this way.

"I already have your answer." That's one thing he has. It's not worth anything of what he thought it would be. "This is us. This has always been us. The rest was an illusion. There is no undoing it because we never truly changed. We just realized, that's all."

[sleight_of_fate]

"If I start screaming, I'm not gonna stop," Rhys says firmly, There's no debating that point: Rhys can feel panic and the breakdown that comes with it bubbling close to the surface but not quite giving in. He intends to keep it that way.

He breathes in slowly, breathes out again, and a tumble of colored pebbles fall from his cascading earth to the ground to scatter like dice.

"I don't know. Maybe this is still an illusion and we're still in a room somewhere. But there's no way to be sure, so I think I'm just gonna...keep trying. Whatever it's worth. Even if it's just to kill the time, you know?" He rubs at his scarred forehead. He misses his hat.

"If I think too much, that's when I start to lose it, and it's not like we can fuck it up here anymore than it already is."