psychoshenanigans | GOODNIGHT // AU

Entry tags:

coil,
robin

GOODNIGHT // AU

As if his situation needs much explaining. Dropped off again, another shift, another jump, another abandoned child in an apparently endless sea of dimensional vagrants. Robin is starting to feel like his place in the universe is not so unique after all--but that is a story for another time.

Right now, it is the dead of night. The moon is full. He's been told that this makes some of them stronger, but he figures that also makes this the best time to catch them. Might as well get them while they've deigned to come out in the open, rather than trying to dig them out of tunnels and basements and heavily-secured office buildings.

Usually, when he lands in a place like this, Robin picks up a job, puts down some roots, and builds up a reasonable handful of resources before really diving into the meat of the world... But this time, he got bored of that pretty fast. After his time in the Drift Fleet, "Earth" is both so familiar and so foreign to him that he's been trouble sitting still for long. He went digging for trouble almost as soon as his feet hit the ground.

And that trouble is vampires, apparently. He keeps wondering if he'll see Tabby around somewhere. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Aside from the part where he's in the business of killing things just like her. And since he doesn't get paid, it's more like a hobby, which is probably worse.

This particular warehouse is neutral territory as far as the vampires go. Risky, because any clan could sweep in and kick out any other clan at a moment's notice--but generally, a safe place for drifters to hunker down in a pinch. The building itself used to be in the business of vehicle manufacturing, though all that's left are stripped-down machines, rusted conveyor belts, and a whole three decades' worth of graffiti.

Robin sneaks in quietly, takes out one before his buddy notices. Once there's noise, the rest scatter in every direction--which leads to a delightful ten minutes of tag. The kind where if you lose, you're dead.

He dragged some blood around in the middle of it, just to try and keep the further ones from escaping. He feels half-blind when it comes to these things. He hooks a few, probably does some damage, but it's hard to judge whether these mostly-dead creatures will just get back up and scuttle away again. He wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them slip through his powers entirely.

After the dramatic chasing is over, he hops over a railing and back onto the production floor with all the usual grace of a demigod. Running his gloved fingers through his hair, he tries to "look" over the rest of the room, searching for anyone he might have missed--and halfway wondering if he should bother looking for loot. These guys were clearly just passing through. Probably not a lot to pick off the corpses, metaphorically speaking...

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There's still a few scuttling around in the dark somewhere, surely. For the monsters, if they hadn't been one of the first to make it out of the building, the major escape routes had turned into nothing but deadly bottlenecks. It would have been fine if this thing attacking them had been playing by any of the usual rules--of physics and logic and whatnot--but all open spaces had become a series of minefields. Somehow, even when a path seemed clear, fleeing monsters were caught, dragged, tangled up on nothing until the hunter could frolick over to finish the job himself.

To anyone watching, it had quickly become clear that drawing any sort of attention was as good as queuing up for slaughter. So, hiding and waiting for a more subtle opportunity to sneak by had been the best plan, at first. But, as the number of targets quickly dwindled, opportunity to slip away also evaporated.

There are less things to keep that dangerous attention occupied, now. Any creatures unlucky enough to still be trapped in the nooks and crannies are in some real trouble, as Robin gets to go hunting for stragglers.

...Though, who is to say that there isn't something much worse hiding here? As Robin's attention is free to comb back toward some of the more towering safety-hazards that were once production machines, there's maybe some warning beginning to prickle at the back of his neck. It's probably just the denser shadows and more jagged edges here, but there is the feeling that maybe whatever might be remaining could be darker and bigger than the rangy monsters he'd just been playing with.

'Wait,' comes the soft chiming of a bells from the back of his mind. Robin and his ghosts all look up at once, stopped almost mid-step. His skin is prickling with something that shouldn't be there, the shadows seem too long, too deep. His siblings lower their metaphorical heads again, but Robin already has the message.

He peers at nothing, staring down the darkness while his mind projects flickers of movement and snickers of sound that were never there to begin with. He feels very uncomfortable--though he has a funny way of showing it.

"Hah," he says, breaking a half-minute spell of silence, "Don't go and do that, now..."

And when nothing lunges out to attack him, he takes a few confident steps forward, just to fuck with whatever's managed to worm inside his head. He starts looking for creatures that can bleed, not monsters that don't exist. He lets his voice echo through the hollowed-out shell of a processing station.

"You might as well be handing out an open invitation."

No living shadows go snapping out at him like the last time something had punched fear into his head. So, whatever is at fault this time is probably not quite as fearsome as a black dragon.

Whoever's plucking at his nerves is very good at making it feel like the worries are forming out of his own thoughts... but they don't follow it up with anything else.

Odds are, the talented-but-unlucky creature is crouching deeper into its hiding place and grinding its fangs in frustration. The way the silence thickens into something more like tension is a good sign that Robin is getting close.

It feels like an actual ghost is haunting the machines around him. Thankfully, he'd be hard-pressed to find a reflective surface anywhere in this junk heap of a building--otherwise his knowledge of actual monster biology might make him paranoid of being haunted.

As it is now, he's assuming this is the work of a vampire he hasn't weeded out yet. Maybe a powerful one, with how quickly his own mind keeps running back to "what if"s and irrational nervousness. The more he stews in it, the funnier he thinks it is, to the point of giggling to himself once he thinks he spots something wedged underneath one of the dead machines.

He walks nearby, and then a little ways past... Just to be a dick about it. He circles back very quickly, reaching down with alarming speed to grab at the clothes of this hidden figure. Time to drag it out to where he can see it.

The creature is dragged out hissing as expected, but he doesn't flail like a wild, wounded cat as the others tend to do. He's easy to pick up once he's dislodged from his hiding place--he's on the small side and he keeps his limbs close and compact as he's dragged.

It's not because he lacks fight, though. He just needs that moment to reorient, restrategize, and aim.

As soon as he's hauled around to get a look at his attacker's face, the little vampire strikes. An arm, an elbow, even a kick if he can get away with it... whatever limb seems like it will make the best weapon at the time snaps out, right for Robin's trachea.

Old habits die hard.

There was something clever on the tip of his tongue, but it slips away from him. This warehouse isn't particularly well-lit, especially at night, but the light of the full moon bleeds in just enough to show him a sunken, scarred-up face underneath that ratty hood.

It looks kind of familiar, which is strange. Something about that eye...

Unfortunately, rifling through his memories for a matching picture is distracting. He isn't expecting a leg to swing up and make sudden contact with his delicate throat.

His inhumanity is obvious, for a second, as his head snaps back and he makes a startled, strangled sort of choking sound--but the rest of him stays unnaturally planted, now holding his captive audience out at arm's length and several inches off the ground, as if he didn't weigh anything at all.

Aside from his stance, something else about Robin seems wrong. His blood is coursing through him like he's had a bad scare, but only in his arm. A little in his throat. Blood isn't supposed to move like that, and any vampire with half a brain could tell.

When he brings his head back around, he still can't talk, coughing painfully against a healing trachea... but his expression is perplexed, more than anything. This scrappy little thing can't be who he thinks is is, can it?

For the most part, whatever life had been before undeath doesn't end up mattering much with these creatures. But when that previous life had been spent fighting monsters much stronger and more incomprehensible than oneself, those skills don't fade away.

Coil has no idea what this demon could be, but he doesn't waste much time wondering about it now. He'd really like to ponder over the possibilities while also making a healthy retreat.

A second or two are spent discovering that he can't twist out of his own sweatshirt and that he doesn't have anything beneath his shoes to kick off of. So, he curls up and braces his feet on his attacker like the trunk of a tree, and works on the arm that he's still caught with instead.

Living or dead, things are still usually made up of nerves and muscle and bone. He digs his fingers in at what should be the weak points, the joints and centers of pain. He can only pray that something actually gives.

While his catch tries to wriggle out of a grimy sweatshirt, Robin gets a couple of seconds to really look at the kid. He seems a little older, maybe? And definitely stronger than he'd been the last time he'd seen him. That was all the way back in...

Pain suddenly shoots up into his arm, and he finds enough of his voice to complain.

"--Ow, hey!" One more cough, as he tries twisting his hand, as if that wasn't just exposing more nerves to dig into. "Fuck, ow...!"

He finally gives up, drops the kid like a sack of potatoes, and pulls in his wrist to rub at the offended pinpricks of agony. He hisses, but it's a human sound. No fangs, just frustration. Robin knows that this kid's going to try and make a break for it, but...

"Coil?" He asks anyway, incredulous, while the pain in his hand takes a backseat to a mounting number of questions and suspicions.

He absolutely is planning on making a fast dash to save his own life, but it ends up not being quite as immediate as he'd like. With his better-than-human abilities now, he can twist around to land in a neat crouch when he's dropped, and he would have been gone in the next instant if he'd been in better shape. One leg doesn't catch him right when he lands, his knee bashes hard into the cement, and he can't quite unfold again and run with the way that bones sort of crunch together in his chest.

So, he's delayed long enough to hear his name.

Just before he can recover and bound away, the kid's head whips around to stare at his attacker--first in fear that he's been recognized, and then... in narrow-eyed confusion.

He should continue fleeing, especially with how he can't quite place the ghost he's looking at, but he doesn't. He hesitates one second more, just to see.

Robin's eyes narrow as well, as he tries to assess whether or not Coil can recognize him--or if this is secretly some sort of elaborate trick heralded by the earlier, unwarranted feeling of mortal dread.

"Robin. I'm Robin." He gestures to himself, taking a small step away. Giving the kid some room. He probably sounds a little crazy if he's wrong about this, but he'd rather make a bad impression than beat around the bush. "From the tower, and the fleet. Do you remember me?"

And what if he doesn't? Disappointing--but what if he does? What does he do then? Even as his wheels spin on ahead of him, he has the distinct thought that he's really starting to get sick of having to ask if people recognize him.

It's the word "fleet" that does it. The other ones are vaguely familiar, but "fleet" is something that has distinctly only come up once in his life. It's a term that hasn't really been used before or since his nonsensical time spent drifting in the black.

The breathing room is appreciated. As fear and flight begin to turn to incredulity, the kid straightens up out of his crouch a little bit--which is a pretty clear answer that he at least knows what Robin is talking about. He's still mostly hunkered down like an animal, but looks a little more like himself now. There are differences, but it's definitely him. Staring with suspicious surprise, that's certainly Coil's eye, despite the fact that it seems to have lost its glow.

He's having a hard time catching up, though. Aside from the sheer dimensional distance between himself and the last place he'd seen the demigod, it had all happened several lives ago--if it had actually happened at all, of course.

All Coil can do to express himself is lift a hand to point at Robin in disbelief. It's almost an accusatory gesture.

Ah, so Coil does recognize him. Any relief he feels is weighed down by a confusing slog of implications, more questions, and a sprinkle of indignation.

"I know," he replies, shrugging his shoulders up towards his ears, "What the fuck am I doing, showing up on planet Earth out of nowhere, right?"

And just like that, he drops his predatory attitude for the sake of complaining.

"I've been here a week, maybe." And then it's his turn to straighten, gesturing open-palmed out towards Coil's whole situation. "And what's up with you?"

Coil doesn't leave his crouch, but he does set his weight back on the heel of his one good leg--still prepared to run if needed, but not primed to snap at any moment. That kind of tension is exhausting, and he can't keep it going with how the gears seem to be shifting between them.

Do vampires experience adrenaline in the same way that humans do? Whatever their excuse for it is, it's starting to jitter its way out of Coil's system. It should probably feel like relief, but it doesn't. It's more like an upset, empty stomach--he's feeling hollow and restless now, as the rush of fear begins to ebb. It's making room for other things... pain, confusion, hunger, exposure. Running had been easier, maybe.

And that question is too big. In trying to grasp the scale of it, Coil comes up with nothing. Uncomfortable, he just shakes his head.

"Oh..." Robin mimics the shake of Coil's head. "Not good?"

Not that he's going to get an answer. It looks like the kid still can't talk. He also doesn't have a pulse, now that Robin is finally paying attention to him--which means the boy is dead, technically, like all of the other creatures that had been holed up in here.

And those wounds are... Actually, a lot worse than they look. A normal human wouldn't be taking that kind of damage passively. Is Coil a vampire now?

"Tega..." He swears, running a hand through his hair again. His white roots show, just a little, under all the black. "There is a lot, isn't there? Ah..."

And then he finally looks around again, remembering the warehouse. The skeletal platforms, the gutted machinery, the poignant shadows, and so on. "Damn, I didn't just kill a bunch of friends of yours, did I?"

Coil follows Robin's gaze out to the rest of the building, pausing like he really needs to think about the answer to that question. While that's probably part of it, at least, he's thinking much more about how the rest of his "friends" have probably taken this distraction to make their own sneaky escapes. Whoever had survived must have left him far behind by now.

So, he gives a noncommittal shake of his head, looking empty about it. Whatever the answer might have been a few hours ago, it doesn't matter anymore. One more pack, gone.

He reaches back, wraps grimy fingers around an equally-grimy piece of machinery, and hauls himself up onto his good leg. If his life had still been in danger, he could have jogged around on the busted limb for a while more before he'd have to think about it, but he is very aware of the fact that it hurts now. He doesn't have to test it, or his ribs, to be able to tell just how much is churned up inside.

He shouldn't have paused until he was somewhere safe. Instincts (and his stomach) are still pulling at him to leave, tallying up some abstract regrets, but the situation continues to change. His wounds are catching up to him, an old friend from two universes away is the one who'd inflicted them, and he has nowhere left to go.

What, in all the stupid worlds, is he supposed to do now?

About ready for a distraction himself, Robin accepts the answer with a short nod, and watches Coil haul himself up onto one of two legs. He's kind of made a practice of murdering things like this... but none of them have been acquaintances of his. None of them have really been people before now.

But maybe he shouldn't assume that Coil is someone just because he knew him, once...

Too confusing, all this. Maybe they can find somewhere to catch up a little later. For right now, Robin feels he might owe Coil an apology, so he shifts and takes a step back towards the kid again.

"Hey, want me to fix it?"

He points so that Coil knows he means his leg and not some profound statement about repairing the boy's extended reality.

Coil is certainly lacking some of the things that would have made him easily identifiable as someone. As far as Coil is concerned, it has probably been a while since he, at least, has considered himself a person. It seems he is finally living the persona he'd spent years projecting--he really is a derelict little wretch, now. If he has thought much about his appearance, or living like a human at all, since he'd died, it doesn't show.

In the beginning, he used to be careful to clean himself up thoroughly after his messy feeds, if only for the sake of stealth... but, judging by the dark stains on his shirt and fingers and chin, he has even begun to let that habit slip.

He's still enough of a person to want to communicate, though. For him, that's probably a very good sign. His brow quirks in confusion, and he draws the shape of a question mark in the air.

With the warehouse deserted (the last stragglers have long since abandoned this stomping ground), he doesn't mind speaking plainly about his abilities. Until another dark presence shows up in his radar, he will assume that they're pretty much alone.

"I've got magics." He tilts his head a little, "I could try healing your leg, since I'm pretty sure I wrecked it in the first place."

And his chest, too. That thing would have killed a human. It reminds him of... something much worse that happened a long time ago. Maybe Coil just has a knack for catching death.

As Coil looks down at himself, his thoughts drift backward in time as well. He remembers some of Robin's magic, now... he'd certainly experienced it in vivid, firsthand detail once or twice. Pulling apart and putting back together again. Ripping blood out of lungs. Speaking the language of gods. The memories are foggy, but he's at least beginning to find them again. He's also pretty sure that there had been some sort of important promise in there somewhere, back when Coil had been sure that he'd never see his family again.

Funny how he's in that sort of situation again, and now here Robin is, materializing like the phantom of repetitious histories. If Coil has a knack for attracting death (which he does) then Robin has a habit of following right on its heels.

And Robin likes to mend things, sometimes. Coil is pretty sure he remembers this fact correctly. When Robin is in the mood for it, he likes fixing and doting on things almost as much as he likes destroying them.

So, after looking a little twitchy and letting his head hang to one side while he thinks, Coil eventually nods.

He smiles then, even if it's still tinged with his usual smirk. He probably would have tried to do something regardless of whether or not Coil agreed to it--but the luxury of permission is far more pleasant than having to work around someone's squirming.

So he walks back into the vampire's personal space. He crouches down, this time, instead of grabbing--and the hand he sets on Coil's mangled leg is a gentle one.

"Mm... Yeah..."

The blood in Coil's leg starts to move, a little, but it's not as noticeable as it would have been if he was human. The hot-and-cold pinpricks of feeling aren't as prominent, partly because there just isn't as much blood to move around.

"It's slow..." He muses, something to fill in an otherwise awkward silence, "I could probably get you back to normal if I had a few hours." And then he decides that he might as well ask, while the two of them have been brought together by this cosmic irony (it's not as though Coil has any buddies to tag along with, right?):

"You got anywhere to be, tonight?"

Coil straightens up with the automatic tension of having someone living getting close to him, but the pain of broken-bone-on-bone in his chest keeps him still beyond that.

And once Robin starts working, Coil recognizes the feeling of crawling blood--if only from a few violent minutes ago and not those much older memories. He prefers the sensation of blood knitting flesh back together over it dragging him down harder than gravity. It's almost nice, by comparison.

Leaning against the machine at his side keeps his weight off of his bad leg, but it also buys him a few more inches of distance between himself and Robin. Now that the demigod is getting up-close and real, it's hard not to look at him. It's hard not to try and remember things, and pick out more familiar, long-lost details from what he's seeing. And hearing and smelling. Living things are always so much brighter than the creatures he spends most of his time around, and Robin tends to gleam.

Coil is hurting and tired and distracted when he half-hears Robin's question and shakes his head.

He glances up in time to see Coil shake his head. He nods a little in response.

"I'll take you to my place."

At another time, in another world, this would have been nothing short of a come-on. Even if it was just to tease him, Robin used to relish the idea of hitting on his one-eyed, inexperienced friend. Now, with both of them feeling like they've got a lot of ground to cover between them, it's just a boring, pointed statement.

"We can settle. Catch up for a while. I'll fix the hole in your chest."

Again, not a metaphor. Some large knot in Coil's leg slowly unwinds.

Coil probably hasn't remembered that particular quirk in Robin's character, but he still can't help a wary, assessing glance at the suggestion. It's not often that he's invited anywhere, especially out of some sort of altruistic intention.

But, he's lacking a lot of reason to argue. Aside from that one hiss between his teeth, he hasn't bothered to take many breaths since he'd been injured. So, he takes one now, just to test... and it's a grinding, wet mess inside. It makes him cough, which is a little startling all on its own. Through his time spent living as a monster, and years before that spent taking monsters apart, he has a pretty clear idea of how a wound like that is going to heal without help. And though the feeling of Robin tying together whatever fibers and ichor his leg is made out is unpleasant, he can tell that the limb really is healing.

Where else would he go, anyway? At least here, he would be with someone he knows... and the thrum under the demigod's skin is quietly convincing all on its own.

Eventually, he nods, and lets his attention wander off to the side--looking at shadows instead of this thing that he doesn't understand.

"Great..." He replies, distractedly. He hadn't looked up to see Coil nod, that time.

Blood continues to sludge through Coil's leg. He's never had so much trouble repairing something like this before. He's almost worried about working it too much, wondering if whatever is inside of Coil will start to dissolve like it does when he pulls it out of the others.

But he'll chance it. Give him another minute, and Coil might even be able to stand on the thing. Among the shadows and the silence, something else occurs to him. He can't ask much about Coil's situation, but he can ask...

"Did you get in my head, earlier? Make the room all scary?"

At least he doesn't sound accusatory. Curious, if anything--and particularly forgiving, since Coil has at least technically been in his head before. They did a bit of back-and-forth with that, if he remembers correctly.

Coil is also maybe worried about his leg dissolving from the inside out. As soon as the limb feels something close to normal and isn't filled with as much mangled-up pain, he leans another step away from Robin to take his leg back.

Testing Robin's handiwork is also a convenient distraction from the question he's asking. Coil can pretend that he doesn't hear it as he experimentally bends his knee and tries easing some of his weight onto it.

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