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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 2, 2021 21:14:01 GMT -8
"Well ain't that some shit?" Golden Boy sniffed. "I mean, maybe he was telling the truth, but he takes above and beyond a prescription. Aello dumped it when she rooted through his stuff. I dunno- after-" his fingers danced along the edge of the glass, shoving down the bubbling frustration with a even breath.
"Anyway. He didn't mean to fuck with you on purpose. Or, he did, but from my understanding the addiction's bad. He meant to lie, I mean, not what I pulled." He struggled to string the words together as he kept his affect as mature and controlled as he could.
"You okay?"
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Post by Rowan on Mar 3, 2021 7:03:00 GMT -8
"Yes. No?" He took a deep breath. His psyche bounced back enough for him to attempt coherence.
"I figured, I was helping him. He’s told me how hard it had been for him since coming back and I feel that. I really do. And then I saw-" His voice broke a little. Asking would make it real. "I saw his forearms."
He sat upright, placing his head in his hands to let it rest on his knees. "I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I thought he was hurting."
"How are you guys holding up? How’s Cinder?"
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 3, 2021 11:35:58 GMT -8
"No... I get it," he said, mouth twisting. He had almost cracked the guy's skull. The hand drifted to the split along his scalp, and he chuckled. "I wasn't there for whatever deal he worked out with you, but the stuff he's dealing with isn't made up." As Rowan went on about his motley member, he blinked,
"He tore open the main artery in his forearm — It's fine, he isn't here. He was hospitalized in August and missed the first month of his semester." There was anger in his tone.
"So now he's digging himself out of his own pit. Sorry he dragged you in. I'm fine. Cinder failed her last midterm and is still beating herself up over it. But, you know, she'll just sign up for another crusade to make up for it." She still had time to party and pull double duty with her Summer crap after all.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 3, 2021 19:13:31 GMT -8
Rowan hadn't spent altogether that much time with their motley, but they have always been kind to him. Cinder as she tried to teach him how to talk to people. Tanner, being the responsible adult. Golden watching over them. At least some things didn't change. "What was it you said earlier? Fuck." Had he missed some cue? Was he not listening because he was too self-involved? Both, probably. He winced from the way the Fairest was talking about his motley mate. "That's harsh, don't you think." Especially coming from another Fairest.
He had seen Ivory overdose and the fear and anguish it caused him. He managed to empathize with the bird girl through sheer shared experience. "And Aello?" Despite what had happened between them at Yule, no one deserved to go through that.
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 4, 2021 13:09:14 GMT -8
Golden opened his mouth, before his phone buzzed as if on cue.
"Hey!" he chirped in a cheerful tone, receiver to his ear as Rowan could hear the edge of Tanner's voice. "I don't know, seemed fair to chat with the guy you recruited." There was a beat as the silence stretched, the Fairest's eyes sparkling with pain and Arcadian malice of a Fairest who had been burned by his closest ally.
"No, I didn't hurt him-" there was a reproachful tone sounding like an apology for making shitty assumptions, and Golden's miserable smirk stretched. "You did, though. Be mad. I was when you put down glamour for everyone to be silent about this shit- Your privacy ended when you abused your job to get him to feed your addiction," he enunciated. Tanner's voice was too quiet to make out now.
"I'm not coming home. I don't care right now, you can complain to Cinder."
He hung up on the Beast as the other was saying something, turning the phone off completely. Rowan's own phone buzzed after a moment, and the Fairest's eyes narrowed.
"He's digging himself out because he keeps deflecting help. Should I keep lying? Anyway, Aello's...Um. Well, her studying is fine and she's making more friends." He kept watching Rowan's phone, frost swirling around his breath as he maintained the inappropriate tone that everything was peachy.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 4, 2021 14:32:15 GMT -8
Rowan checked his phone - Tanner. Nope, he didn't want to talk to hi right then. He dropped the phone on the bed and did his best to ignore it. Bzz-bzz.
"I was talking about Cinderella," he explained. "She's doing her best. Besides, none of you have any idea how to deal with this. And no, you're not fine." Bzz-bzz.
"What you are is dodging my question. I remember when Ivory basically did an entire bag of Fairy Cocaine in front of me; studying fine and making friends is not how I would describe my state." Bzz-bzz.
"You're what, 16? 20? No one's asking you to be okay with your family member attempting suicide. It's alright if you don't want to talk about it, but don't pretend everything is normal."
Bzz-bzz. Bzz-bzz. Rowan was getting annoyed at all this. At Golden, shoving his head in the sand. At Tanner, coming up with excuses instead of asking for help. But he was also scared. Scared to have a Rose Water rerun. Scared that he would once again be a powerless bystander. His emotions became mixed and muddied, bleeding into his voice as he finally picked up.
"What could you possibly have to tell me right now, Tanner?"
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 4, 2021 15:30:36 GMT -8
Golden smoothed his hair, blinking, "M'not. I don't get what you're asking — really asking. I don't mean what I say, I'm just mad at what's going on."
He blew out his cheeks when Rowan brought up experiencing someone overdosing, "I'm sorry that happened. That's fucked. Are you talking to people-?" he cut himself off with a sharp laugh, realizing his own hypocrisy. "I get it."
The Fairest thief looked over his shoulder and mumbled something to thin air, before trailing his attention back to Rowan. "I don't know how old I am. Doesn't really matter, though? I think you'd understand that a bit...do you want to talk about it? I've talked about it a lot, but only to Dawn Catcher." There was something else he was dancing around, like he was torn between hustling the Darkling out the door versus making the situation he created worse with the feigned callousness.
He started to talk again, teeth clicking shut as Rowan answered the phone.
There was silence for a moment, and the Page didn't actually expect him to pick up and realize he didn't have a plan.
"Are you safe? What happened?"
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Post by Rowan on Mar 4, 2021 16:31:34 GMT -8
"By Golden? No. By you? Yes. I trusted you." He let out a sharp breath and noticed the fog coming out of his mouth. "I'll call you later." He hung up.
"I'm asking if your motley needs to see a therapist. From the way you're talking to Tanner and about Cinder, it sounds like you're at each other's throat. Now, I don't have a motley, and I'm used to doing things on my own, but you guys Pledged for a reason." He was talking, but mostly he was looking at his breath. He closed his eyes.
"Right. I'm a Snowskin, so I'm supposed to keep it all bottled in and be intimidating and stuff. Well guess what. I am talking about it, because I-" The Wyrd tightened around his throat, preventing him for talking about Imbolc. "Because I need help and it's taken me over a year to realize that."
"I'm here, still talking to you, even after you fucking whammied me, and tried to headbutt me and kidnapped me." His voice was kept calm and steady, despite the urgency he was feeling. "You, on the other hand, have ghosts crawling up your ass so much that the entire room is one giant cold spot and your sovereign won't do shit about it. Your friend is an addict and your motley is on the verge of collapse."
"It's okay to ask for help. But if I walk out that door, you're on your own."
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 5, 2021 22:35:21 GMT -8
The snowblind of Winter whited out the room as the younger stood and stretched. "I don't... I think there's been a miscommunication. When did I go after your Kith?" He thought for a moment, running over what he had said so far. "I was talking about the whole age thing, how time compresses, or doesn't." His attention roved again, before circling back.
Rowan had been stared at by the Hunterheart before. Whether it was intentional or part of his nature, the guy didn't seem to blink, and had a way with locking people in a hostile stare that revealed the Arcadian taint that went deeper than just the Wyrd. The avoidance in behaviour and eye contact might have been embarrassment, or an attempt to step with the illusion of social norms.
"I've got some stuff that's stacked over the years. I wasn't exactly a good Samaritan. I think I'm doing better, now," there was the edge of a question in that moment of vulnerability. "Tanner's stuff made me reassess what I think's important, and I'm not a big fan of how things are built around here. Instead of serving someone else, I just decided to wrap my head around something I was curious about. It didn't..." He titled his head, looking at the ceiling.
"Now I got this new problem, and I've dragged my friends down because of it. It's just as bad, really. I feel like I've fucked up in a way I can't take back and it's hurt everyone even more than I can imagine. I just don't-"
The Fairest forced himself to approach the Snowskin properly instead of stalking the room. "I can't fix this right now. But asking for help when I don't have enough information is kind of selfish, isn't it?" As he says 'selfish' the weight of the word felt more like a sentencing. The concept disgusted him.
Goldeb Boy picks at something in his teeth, hiding whatever expression under the exaggerated movement.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 6, 2021 14:13:55 GMT -8
Rowan's focus snapped back to Golden. "Wait. Were you-? You too?" He scratched the back of his head, both in embarrassment and in marvel. "I'm just more used to the 'cold shoulder' gripe."
"I know I'm just some random guy Tanner met because of his office. And that you have absolutely no reason to trust me. But I don't think your asking for help is selfish. Right now, you're in no position to help anybody, no matter how hard you want to."
He got up the bed and face the Fairest. Did Rowan understand what he was feeling? Not really. The posturing was hiding something, but he couldn't tell what. He knew the theory behind his Seeming, but that was about it. If the Darkling didn't want to be cut out from the community, it was time he tried to give back to it. And for some darned reason, he had decided to start with this here haunted teenager. Was it because of the shared experience? Because Rowan recognized his struggles? Yes. He wanted to reach him, he just had to find the right words.
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 0:43:38 GMT -8
"Um," his mouth twisted as if testing the words. "And I'm used to people already knowing. Yeah, man, eight or nine years old? I think any younger and I probably would have just turned into a hob, but no one actually knows how it works and how it worked out for me." He blinked, watching the raw reaction from a Snowskin of all Kiths and decided to afford him a little more.
"I think, anyway, because when I came out they were that age. Can't say how much time passed, but I assume not a lot. Else I don't think I would have had a memory to chase in the first place."
There was a long beat of silence as he leaned against the wall. At this point he had talked about it plenty — he had been forced to, but it still made him tired for reasons he didn't understand. It was because of that, that he didn't even think to ask Rowan about his own details.
"No one who survives is what I'd call some 'random person'."
He crossed his arms, head swiveling at a sound that the Darkling didn't pick up on.
"We've got a bit of a plan?" He tilted his head, "I'm not- you're Autumn, right? So you would get that I'm not withholding to get off on the fact that I know something you don't. It's a door you don't get to shut once you're in, so..."
The Fairest mulls something out, straightening as he gets an idea.
"The Freehold's Rites revolve around sacrifices to the dead. Pay attention. And then when you stand on the threshold of Twilight, pay silver to the dead. That's what I'm going to give you." Rowan could work out whatever he was going to on his own, with his own resources. At least then, Golden Boy could tell himself the guy understood what he was signing up for and was capable of navigating it.
"You've got to experience it. I can't explain it. You can swap Kiths, right? Have you...talked to them?" the Fairest asked, frowning. Though the Onyx thief wasn't outwardly nervous, Rowan knew when he was being watched with a practiced eye. "Uh- I started trying some things around places of power. To see what attacks us outside the wards, and what happens to the ones that don't stay in the Hedge. I didn't expect much?" His lips thinned as he chewed the inside of his cheek.
"Then they pulled me in. Almost destroyed me," he laughed.
"After I clawed back out, they wanted to talk. But I can't talk to them."
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 14:48:00 GMT -8
Crap. That was even younger than Rowan. The Darkling moved to apologize, but stopped. He remembered how he hated it when others did it to him. The looks of pity like those would change anything.
"I get it," he simply said. He tried to put his hand on Golden's shoulder, stopped and let it drop. Dani had done it to him and he thought it was a good moment for that, but the gesture felt just too weird.
"You went poking at the Wards?" His eyebrows shot up. "I'm not judging," he added after a moment of considering hoe that sounded. "I'm kinda- I'm doing that too. They just sound too good to be true, you know?" He closed his eyes to pool what little knowledge he had on the subject. "I understand the basic gist of it, I'm missing the specifics."
"Plan? I suppose I could try and liaison but..." His thoughts wandered off for a moment. "I might know someone. Winter, deals with ghosts a lot. Are you okay with me calling them in on this?"
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 15:18:36 GMT -8
"You don't need to worry about the Plan. Motley's on it. We're trying to get a handle on things," Golden said slowly. The Fairest was aware he was speaking to an Autumn Darkling, and thus eagerness for the mysterious was expected.
He watched the hand like it was venomous, but otherwise not reacting. The arms were uncrossed, noting the water in the glass starting to solidify with sprouting leaf-like crystals. His eyes pinched with apprehension. He had floated the question, and Rowan sidestepped it.
The Fairest wasn't looking to burden the guy with something he didn't comprehend, and wasn't looking to force him to admit ignorance. At the offer to involve the Court he was already part of since 2015, he swallowed, waving a hand like he wanted to be done with this exchange as the world started to spin again. He had given him buried and dangerous information for free — payment done, guilt absolved.
"...You should probably go? I can handle this."
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 15:33:48 GMT -8
"Yeah, no. I'm not letting you handle anything on your own." He gestured to Golden to indicate exactly what could go wrong. "They're here, aren't they?" He started to unzip his overalls and tie the top part around his waist. He was wearing an unfortunate thrifted t-shirt underneath, something about yolks and dads.
Rope bites criss crossed over all of his body as dirt stained his skin and clothes. dirty nails and the smell of earth finished the transition to a kith that Rowan was spending increasingly more and more time in. He placed his hand on his eyes as she adjusted his sight to things he couldn't yet see.
When Rowan removed his hand, his eyes were milky white with cataract.
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 15:53:52 GMT -8
The dragon sniffed, "Uh- sort of. With Winter, you can tap into the regret and grief, and it bridges the suffering that anchors them. It isn't what you do," he clarified, meaning the Gravewight's gifts.
"But... it's like they start to know and reach out on their own accord. I couldn't see them before, until after. It's like...perceiving the soul instead of what you would call a wraith?" Golden smoothed his hair back, struggling to articulate information he had come by through experience, rather than scribed by an occultist.
"There's the underworld, and Twilight- but you know that. So what's in between?" He sounded lost. It was a new field and he was looking at the Autumn courtier to make sense of it. He was, of course assuming that's what Rowan meant by "understanding the basic gist of it."
Golden didn't appear phased by the marble-eyed attention, and subsequent period of musing. As the material world falls to dim shadows and muffled stimuli, Rowan starts investigating.
It took focus, but the Fairest had almost undetectable chains. Rowan's heart sank a bit instinctually to note that the Lost had a sickly resonance and a faint glow, like a candle to attract moths. Alas, without context he wasn't sure what was weird and what was normal to start sifting a diagnosis.
As his attentions moved beyond, something was sliding from his periphery. Whipping his head back and forth, he noted fleeing hands ticking back into cracks and corners; fingers releasing from the ledge of the window.
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