Chapter 008 - [Voice]/[Action]

[consultmybooks]

[It's the afternoon of the seventh when Giles finally finds his voice again, enough to address the village at large. He still doesn't sound in any fit state when he finally sends the message out over the journal - there are several seconds of silence preceding it.]

For those of you who...weren't already informed...

[A pause, as Giles mentally prepares himself to take this leap, this final step. His voice is quiet, but steady, when he finally gets the words out.]

...Helios Sprensonne was killed in the fighting.

It...we lost him in the middle of the night on the fifth. S-So he, he should be back sometime on the twelfth, or the thirteenth. I, I would appreciate it if...those of you who know him would keep an eye out for his return. Frederic and I will do our best, of course, but...it's a big village, and...we've never done this before.

A-And if you don't know him, he...he has blond hair, and green eyes. About...mid thirties in age. He's a bit shorter than me, and he has a bit of an accent. Not sure how many of you know what "Romanian" is...just, just please help him if you see him. He's a bit of an absentminded fool, really...might need some help getting home.

...thank you.

[Locked to House 7 Residents + Jack Sparrow - 20% unhackable 75% unhackable, courtesy of Buffy's efforts]
First and foremost? Someone improve this filter, please.
Besides that...his magic doesn't last if he dies. We might need to make other arrangements.
[/Locked]

[Locked to Frederic Francois Chopin - 20% unhackable, 100% unhacakble, courtesy of Frederic's efforts]
...whatever you want to do about this...about me...all I ask is that you decide it before he gets back.
Even if it's just so I can be moved out.
[/Locked]

[Floor five, room twenty two...home...is not an option right now, for reasons he understands even if those reasons only make everything harder. Even so, he'll really only venture into the village proper, armed only with his umbrella and a string bag, to pick up some food from Seventh Heaven for lunch and dinner. He still doesn't trust himself to work a stove or any sort of electrical appliance beyond a light switch or a shower, and without Frederic...

...without Frederic...

...Helios was taken from him, brutally ripped away by the teeth and fangs of monsters. But Frederic just...doesn't want him near, right now, and that hurts almost as much and maybe even more. Because Giles understands perfectly well, now that he's come down off the power and the bloodlust and the rage. He understands why the composer is leery of being around him. He knows that, when all is said and done, Frederic is the only one who can give him any kind of absolution for what he did that night and that his friend has no reason to give it.

He understands, but it makes getting through the day...the thought of getting through the week...almost impossible to bear.

Anyone who wants to find Giles will likely either encounter him on the way to or in Seventh Heaven. Otherwise, they'll find him at home or just generally in the vicinity of CH7 - most likely on the front steps and fidgeting anxiously with a lump of artist's clay the size of his fists. It took a few tries, but he managed to find an apartment that was unoccupied, on one of the higher floors. He can't bring himself to move any further. The area around this particular community building is an area he's familiar with even while blind, and on top of everything else he can't trust himself to

He'll take care to be high enough on the steps that he can take shelter under the building's canopy from the rain - dry clothes after coming home were the best feeling in the world and the greatest comfort after the long nightmare that was this draft, and he's not eager to experience rain again. Not even if that rain is just a light seasonal shower, nothing on the ferocious monsoon that marked their last day and night in the rain forest.

He seems shell shocked, shaken, exhausted, and overall like a man who has lost his best friend and waded through blood this past week and is trying to deal with it. There are bad moments, all day - moments where the wet, squelching sounds of bodies exploding ring in his ears. Moments where he feels as though he's choking on someone else's blood. Moments where he hears the howls of the Shift Hunters in the wind, and the light rainfall of the day becomes the sharp sting of the monsoon. Moment's where he fears he might not be able to lock up the part of him that smiled as his victims...and they were victims...died bloody, where he fears that this is who the people he loves will know him to be from now on.

Moments where he's glad to be alone so he can just break down and cry for the loss of his best friend, of the man he refuses to stop thinking of as his own beloved brother.

And there are some moments...the worst, strangest moments of all...where he's just glad that he wasn't one of the unfortunate few to die in that jungle. He's lived through death once. He can only hope, has only hoped, that even Luceti isn't cruel enough to make him live through it again until the end.

Thanks to the last of Helios' magic, he's unhurt at least.

His eyes, at least, have lost their black color.]


((ooc: If anyone notices - I am very sorry for the repost, I don't usually do that sort of thing. However, my entry wasn't showing up on my friend's list - seeing as how I have myself friended, I thought that was odd. I had been futzing around with the time settings, and I thought that might have knocked my journal entry down to a lower "time" past more entries than it had actually should have been when I posted. I'm reposting to see whether or not that is the reason why my entry wasn't showing up.

And, hey, turns out that it was! Teach me to mess around with technology I don't understand *derp*.

The moral of the story is that Lazarus doesn't fix everything. Every time I've tried to recover this entry with Lazarus, it's reset my changes to the time that knocked my entry off my friend's list listing in the first place. Soooo...sorry for the comm spam, guys!))

Comments

[consultmybooks]

[Small talk is all he's got right now.]

I was starting to not believe you, for a while.

...still not sure I do. It's getting to be depressing, looking back and seeing how I've adapted to this. I always thought going blind would be...the end, or something.

[Babbling. It's a bad conversational habit he's been slipping in and out of all day.]

But here I am. Survived a war. Probably still got off easier than you and the narcolepsy. Th-That is what it was, yes?

[herotypical]

Yeah. Just the one day, though. And then I was back to being footloose and fancy-free on the field. Which...really, it wasn't the smoothest of campaigns.

[consultmybooks]

...some of the fighters are saying we lost.

[herotypical]

...It's not like it was our battle to win or lose in the first place.

[ buffy scuffs a foot. ]

[consultmybooks]

We were the ones getting stabbed, and shot, and trapped, and killed.

It was our battle more than anyone's.

[herotypical]

That's not...[ she seems increasingly bothered by these misunderstandings between the two of them.

patience: ] I just mean that our battle wasn't winning that ground. Our battle was getting the most of our numbers back home safely. And so it wasn't a gold medal win but it was at least something around the bronzey, silver area.

[consultmybooks]

[It reminds him too much of his fight with Paprika, this insistence on distancing themselves from the Malnosso's schemes and goals. He doesn't understand how anyone, coming out of that jungle, can say that this isn't their war. They're the ones who have to fight, the ones who die if they don't.

But she has a point. A good point. Giles relents - that's why he believes it's their fight, after all, that they fight to protect themselves and their own

Quiet:]

...maybe even gold, then.

I haven't heard of any fatalities yet besides Helios. And I have been listening.

One man in a hundred.

[herotypical]

[ she matches his pitch: ] Better than my odds.

[ either with her own life or with the lives of the girls back home. ]

[consultmybooks]

[He knows. He's seen.]

...you're fighting a bigger war than this. Back home. [She is. And will be.] Earth is a bigger battleground than that rain forest.

[herotypical]

Their war could be bigger. That...that Commandant? She said she and the General have first-degree-murderized each other a couple dozen times by now.

[ it implies a wider scale than she had been expecting. ]

[consultmybooks]

Did she? Impressive.

...ever since I learned that there was a world outside this barrier, Buffy, I knew it had to be bigger than just this.

But if we're going to fight, I'd prefer it be like this.

[herotypical]

If I could just talk...[ a scoff, a sigh. to who? the general? grell? either would do, right now.

she needs an enemy to sink her attentions into. and not a mute piece of canon fodder. not an elite or a shifter. ]

[consultmybooks]

Talking is easy.

Getting a response is what's generally problematic.

[herotypical]

...I don't think that's a problem I can expect to have.

[ the general, then. yes. this is who she is focusing on in this newest conversation detour. ]

[consultmybooks]

What problem are you expecting to have, then?

[herotypical]

...Managing to find a path that crosses with his, again. That's mostly the main problem.

[consultmybooks]

I suppose he must be so terribly preoccupied, with a world to conquer.

[herotypical]

The Third Party's not trying to conquer a world, Giles. They want us dead. Permanently dead. It's the newest religious fanaticism fad.

[consultmybooks]

[Sigh.]

If they're the only ones left alive on this world? I think that means they've "conquered" it, by default.

[herotypical]

I don't care about the by default. I care about figuring out their motives and seeing where that takes us. I care about finding the right bargaining chip.

[consultmybooks]

I wish you the best of luck with that.

[herotypical]

I don't need luck; I just need an opportunity.

[ the locket. sooner or later, she would have to take it back from sparrow. and that move would mean she was about to lay her life down to negotiate her way into...what? something. ]</small.

[consultmybooks]

And getting that, at this point, seems as though it's a matter of luck. Or the whims of the General, which are about the same as far as we're concerned.

...unless you have a plan to entice him here.

[herotypical]

More likely, I'll see him on a draft.

(ooc; hey -- buffy's actually not available on the evening of the 8th for a thread. if you still want to do something on her appointment post, is it possible to push it up to the 9th? her patrol got rerouted pretty early on.)

[consultmybooks]

Is he any more talkative than the soldiers this time around were?

((ooc: I was...actually wondering whether or not that was going to be an issue, actually. So, total fail on my part. I can push it off.))