savetheearth | Belief / Full Moon

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Belief / Full Moon

Who: Alexander and Reilanin
Where: Alexander and Ravindra's apartment
When: 1/16, evening
What: Reilanin goes to visit, unaware Alexander is freaking out about the echo he received from Henry's power.
Warnings? tba?

She could feel it, imperceptible, beginning to itch beneath her skin. Tonight was safe- tomorrow would be the full moon. Lyall would not be there. Nick would not be there. No one had heard from Angela, as far as she knew- it would just be her and Hajime.

She tried not to think of it. There were a lot of things she was trying not to think about, and a small part of her wondered if that was a smart thing to do.

Not that she felt any of her decisions were smart, so long as they involved her leaving the house. Someone had mentioned working from home. It had been in talks at work, given how often she had been "ill" as of late. Simply a matter of time before they had an idea of how to shift her duties. Most of it could be done from a distance, she reasoned. Just a matter of time.

But today was not work. Today was to visit Alexander. She wondered if he tired of seeing her. Having such a small pool of people she felt comfortable speaking to herself, she certainly wasn't, but Alexander was an altogether different sort from her, much more sociable and outgoing, and she had already seen how things had changed with him since he had confined himself. It made her feel guilty that she did likewise in light of this, but being among other people was difficult.

Everyone just looked so good, and she was starving.

There was never very much traffic in the apartment. That was good. She knew who owned cats and who had a dog, who had also confined themselves to their apartment, who was rarely there. One apartment burned incense and she hurried past it quickly. She knocked on the door, going through her purse for a kleenex, pressing it over her nose with both hands, trying to keep her eyes from watering, to no avail. Another good reason not to go out. Smokers were an even greater nuisance now than they ever had been before.

Who: Hajime and Reilanin
Where: Lyall's house :3c
When: 1/17, evening
What: It's the full moon! :D
Warnings? tba!

She was very careful to keep an eye on the time. While it was still daylight, gone from work early, afternoon off, teetering between starvation and nausea, she made her way to Randolph's place. Would it be enough with just Hajime? It felt like too much, actually, but that was just because her pride and dignity had taken a good stab.

No big deal.

Garage? The room? She didn't like the idea of breaking anything in Randolph's room and it felt too much like trespassing. The whole thing felt like some huge invasion of privacy, but there wasn't much choice to be had in the matter. She had to be somewhere, and someone had to be somewhere with her, end of story. Hajime was to be her- what was that funny word Randolph had used, claviger? It still meant nothing to her. Not a bit of trivia from her own past, then.

She locked the door of the garage behind her, stripped, bundled herself up in a blanket, waited. Third time around, still no better. The itch was maddening, like she could just scratch away her skin. What if it never got better? Oh, she didn't know if she could handle that. The idea of it scared her more than anything else, the ongoing dread as each month approached, the anticipation-

At least she didn't have time to wonder what Hajime thought about the transformation. It seemed a little swifter than the first time, though no less painful. It wasn't long at all before the familiar angry snarls and slams against the door signalled the end of her transformation and recovery.

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Hajime tried not to let on that he was nervous being the only one there. Didn't he need supervision? What if he went crazy bug again? He sat there on the couch, staring down at the Ace of Hearts card he'd received after he and Shou had run into the Blood Keys. He didn't know why, but the card calmed him down. He'd felt far less like going into some murderbug rage ever since he had it back.

It also gave him something to focus on while listening for signs of the change. He wished he could do something to help, give the werewolves something that would let them avoid their own murderwolf rages at the full moon. He didn't think it would be as easy as getting them special playing cards. "Take it easy, Reilanin," he called towards the door, though he knew that probably wasn't helping. She was trapped in a small, unfamiliar room and probably smelling giant bug on the other side of that door. Not at all calming.

Idly, he wondered if he should have stopped by a pet store and picked up some of that dog-calming spray he'd seen advertised in a magazine somewhere. Would that work on werewolves?

No go, Hajime. The voice on the other side just reassured her that there was something to go after, and the thudding against the door got louder and more insistent. Reinforced though the doors were, there was still the threat of the wood splintering under her transformed weight.

Those noises stopped momentarily to allow a full-fledged howl, the type of noise that would have the neighbours wondering and double-checking the locks on their doors. She backed away from the door and inspected the garage more thoroughly, ignoring the door for the moment, snuffling at the floor and grumbling to herself. Trapped! The indignity of it set her anger to simmering.

The garage door made her pause. There was fresh air coming from under it. She put her nose to the ground and sniffed, then began to dig at the concrete floor to try and get through the garage door.

A tangled abomination of cords twisted around each other, wherein the sight alone made one nervous of a potential electrical fire -- that was a smidgen of how Alexander felt. After his failed conversation with one Henry Cassidy (name unknown, face burned into his memory), Alex's skull rattled with horrible scenarios and images from his Echoes, his memories, not his memories, but the memories of the person who had been twisted by the same power that turned transformed a pencil into a sword.

Belief.

The word tasted sour on his tongue. Belief. He thought it with dread, venom, fear, and helpless anger. It was here and in the hands of a child. Children were naive and in their naivety capable of very cruel things. How easily Henry had brushed him off, how quickly he grew frustrated. Alex was not surprised. He wished he had handled it differently, but would it have mattered? A child with the ability to turn one item into another-- anything he wanted!

It was terrifying. Belief was here. Belief was going to seep through the city like a poison, warping everything in its path. There was no defense. There was no cure. He was going to be warped, warped, warped by the thoughts of others, just like that Alexander had been warped by the rumors of Tyrol's citizens.

There was no cure for the imagination.

So his worries circled and circled, building on each other until a terrible monster of fear and panic drowned out sound thought. Holed up in his room, he noticed Ravindra's departure to work far too late and was immediately struck with an acute need to not be alone, though it was just as immediately followed up with an acute fear of being near anyone.

Anyone and their beliefs.

Alex was in the kitchen when Reilanin's knuckles hit the door. He stiffened at the sound, then hurried to finish his endeavor-- collecting a glass, a bag of blood (his own), and a bottle of rum. He did not want to spend the night simultaneously wishing for company and cringing at the very notion. He was going to knock himself out. If ever there was an occasion for such an awful decision, it was the appearance of Belief.

Or what he thought was Belief, anyway.

Odd. Usually he opened the door promptly. She waited a moment longer, sniffing. She could hear and smell well beyond the door, knew he was there. Maybe he hadn't heard?

She knocked again. "Alex?" she asked, just in case, tissue to her nose again. She gave a small, explosive blow into it, wiped her nose, hoping it would get some of the lingering, cloying smell of incense out of her nostrils.

Strange. Was he all right? She put the tissue back into her purse (it was still usable okay) and folded her arms loosely in front of her, rubbing absently at her arm as though to get rid of the subtle itch underneath.

He froze again. Reilanin. It was Reilanin at the door-- of course it was. Who else would visit him around this time? Maybe-- Maybe Lyall would, he could-- oh, but Alex is very glad it isn't Lyall right now. He wouldn't know how to explain.

But Reilanin. Reilanin wouldn't need an explanation.

He temporarily abandoned his mission and undid the locks and bolt of the door with unsteady hands. "Reilanin," he said curtly, by means of greeting. No sooner had she stepped forward did he shut the door and lock it.

Her expression was mid-confusion as the door opened, and she looked up to his face as the door opened. "Hello," she said, stepping in when he let her, startled when he shut the door suddenly behind her- she hadn't even slipped out of her shoes yet.

He didn't look well. The confusion still creasing her brow, she said nothing for a moment as she slipped out of her shoes and began undoing the buttons of her jacket.

She paused. "Everything all right?" she thought to ask, fingers lingering on the edge of her jacket, half-undone. Maybe she shouldn't stay...?

"No," he said honestly, finally looking at her. "Someone has Belief."

Still hesitating, it took another moment for her to continue unbuttoning her jacket and slip it off from her shoulders.

It didn't come all the way off, halfway down her arms, caught in the crooks of her arms, and she watched him with a strange look on her face.

"Belief?"

The way she repeated it didn't quite catch the same fear he did. She knew it from only two echoes- first, that it was something she could use to change herself, and second, that it was something that got weaker the further away from it you went.

"What's wrong with that?..."

Edited 2014-01-19 08:15 (UTC)

The look he gave her was nothing short of bewildered. "Wh- What's wrong with it? Don't you know what it can do?"

Reilanin! Ah, Reilanin, she were supposed to understand.

The accusation made her look away as though ashamed. Maybe she was. "I- no, not really. A small idea. I don't understand what I know."

She shook her jacket out and refolded it, a nervous gesture, looking back up to him, uncertain.

"...I remembered something about it the first time I spoke with Randolph. Something about using it to change myself. I don't know how I was supposed to be able to do that, though."

Hajime remained quiet as the noises at the door intensified. Probably best not to egg her on; he didn't want her breaking into the house. Was she strong enough for that? He quietly resolved to buy some of that doggy calming spray for the next time without telling anyone. If it worked, great, and if it didn't, no one needed to know.

But he was hearing other noises in there once she moved away from that door. What was she doing in there? He wondered if he should go check, but he didn't want to just open the door. That hadn't ended well the first time, after all.

Scrabbling at the ground beneath the garage door wasn't working, but she was finding purchase beneath the door itself and when it made a creaky noise, making the smallest movement upwards-

She started nudging it up with paws and snout. The garage door screeched with every inch she gained as she forced it past its lock.

Using it to change herself? The very notion appalled him. He grimaced and walked past her.

"Do you work tomorrow?" he asked, as curtly as he'd greeted her. He was already pulling down another glass from the cupboard, not waiting for her answer. Manipulating Belief - hah! What a gamble that was. Had that Alexander known? Would it have mattered?

A good thing his back was turned to her as he spoke, hiding the momentary look of hurt on her face, shifting into neutrality a moment later. For many she would not have noticed, would not have cared- Alexander she looked at and listened to much more closely.

Her own fault. Her expression did not slip again.

"...I requested half of the day off." She moved aside to hang her jacket up by the door, her mind going back to what she'd just said, to her earlier dread of tomorrow, all churning in the pit of her stomach. Numbly, she walked over towards him, lingering just outside the boundary of the kitchen, hands loosely at her sides. Half the day tomorrow and two days after that. It didn't feel like it would be enough, but she had to think of her finances. She'd overheard some coworkers discussing a possible illness, cancer right at the top. She'd almost laughed at the irony. At least she wouldn't die the same way her mother had.

"Which half? Nevermind," he said, before she could answer. He decided that he did not care. Now that company was here he wanted it, even if said company didn't understand his distress as he'd hoped.

He poured them both the same, a cocktail of spiced rum and human blood, and slid the glass across the island towards her. He hadn't bothered to screw the cap back on the bottle tightly, nor zip the bag all the way, and he had completely forgotten the ice cubes.

She glanced aside, noticing Olivia walking about the living room with her tail up, before her eyes went back to the island as he set the glass down. The smell hit her, the acridness of the alcohol mixing unsettlingly with the copperiness of the blood. She took note finally of what he'd been doing and made no hurry to step forward and take up the glass.

"What did you remember about it?"

He lifted his own glass and unthinkingly responded with, "Getting myself killed because of it."

There was a nervous energy about him that refused to go away -- and rightly so. That Alexander had resorted to forcing an innocent person to kill him -- had thought nothing of killing another to goad her into doing it because of Belief.

After swallowing, he set the glass down and dragged the back of his palm across his lips. The cocktail was nothing pleasant on his tongue, but he was not concerned with taste. He just didn't want to wake up thirsty.

Edited 2014-01-20 07:48 (UTC)

Her brow creased slightly at his wording. Oh, she believed him- there was no problem there. The unease was still there, but didn't explain his level of vehemence.

She took a drink. Disgusting. She nearly gagged, but even while she thought that, she lifted the glass to her lips a second time.

Did she want to know? She couldn't recall seeing Alexander so worked up over something, fidgeted with the glass on the surface of the island again, licking her lips slowly. "What will you tell me about it?" she asked finally. She didn't want to drag it out bit by bit, question by question. Let him decide now what he wanted her to know. There was some small guilt on her face, but more the shame of not being on the same level as him, not being able to comprehend exactly where his concern stemmed from, not because of the guilt that she did- no, that guilt would be far, far greater.

The sound of the screeching garage door was more than enough to have Hajime decide that opening that door was probably a good idea. She was doing something in that garage, and if the neighbors hadn't been disturbed by the howling, they'd certainly be disturbed by whatever that noise was.

Hajime quickly transformed into his horrible giant bug form before opening the door to the garage. Hopefully he'd be able to distract the werewolf from doing whatever it was doing. And hopefully whatever it was doing wasn't as horrible as it sounded.

Her strength was at odds with the door- it was less likely to budge than another wolf or a bugman, and she yipped once or twice when it came back down on her nose.

She'd gotten it up a few inches, beginning to try and thrust an arm through, when she heard the door open behind her. Her back paws skidded on the ground, trying to force herself forward.

She paused, ears rotating towards him, before flattening against her skull as she continued trying to get under the garage door. She seemed to think she was close to getting it open- in fact, managed to push it up onto her shoulder, which would only leave her to hoist it up from there and slip under it in order to escape. Digging her feet into the concrete once more, she began to push her upper torso through the gap she'd forced.

"Get back here!" Hajime didn't know where he was going to contain her, but the garage certainly wasn't the place for it any more. He charged out there with the intention of dragging the werewolf back into the house. "You can't go out!" He wasn't sure why he kept talking to her; she was showing no signs of understanding. And he had some idea of how being in a monster-instinct-fogged-haze went, so he knew that likely wasn't going to be effective. But he tried anyway. "Stop that right now!"

She snarled at him and continued, in a frenzy, to try and get herself under the garage door, leveraging the door onto her back, panting frantically to give herself a moment to gather another burst of strength.

In otherwords, "no u". Instead of stopping, she was trying even harder to get out.

The door screeched and gave several inches at once, letting her get her hands underneath her and push herself through, granted her didn't make a grab at her.

The gravity of sharing the memory of his death weighed down on his mind. He stared silently at her, almost guiltily. If he told her, she would receive an Echo of the same, wouldn't she?

It was the memory of the werewolf who attacked the Golden Hour again. His gut answer was a snappy "nothing", but he held it back and instead pressed his palm against the base of his throat.

"You were involved," he finally said, nervously watching her fingers. "If I tell you, I think-- I think you'll remember."

She was silent to that, eyes on his face to see if he was telling the truth. Satisfied only in that he was, she sighed, not quite impatient. A forced exhale to dispel what was there.

She'd been involved in his death. Not in a good way. If there had been anything redeeming in it, he'd tell her more easily than this.

It had been a long time since she'd focused on the type of person she must have been. For a moment she held her breath before she spoke again.

"I could remember it any number of ways," she said, looking down again and leaning forward slightly, pushing the glass aside to rest her elbows on the island, folding them in front of her. She didn't look back up. "I'd like to hear it from you."

Hajime did indeed make a grab for her. Really, it was more of a lunge. And it was really too bad he hadn't tried the armored form he got when he used his Ace of Hearts card instead of his default horrible giant bug monster form, for one of the bug's shoulder spikes got hung up on a shelving unit in the garage when he tried for said lunge.

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Belief / Full Moon

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