psychoshenanigans | GRATIA // PSL

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GRATIA // PSL

So, here's what Irahl knows.

He's alone in a dark, cold cave. He has most, if not all, of his gear. No one is guarding his location. As he heads away from the spot where he came to consciousness, no one tries to stop him, and no one gets in his way. The few people he finds down there seem human, and not about to approach the nearly-seven-foot man that comes stalking out of the lower tunnels. Honestly, everyone here seems a surprised and a little astonished about his... Entire scene.

There is a way up. It's a maze of twisting corridors and confusing passageways, half of which feel too small for him. It's bigger and bigger groups of people, some of which scatter like schools of fish, and some of which have to be pushed through to get anywhere. It's climbing up into streets lit with dingy lights, graffiti-covered hallways, warehouses, weird holes in stone walls that may or may not be windows. It's alarm bells, it's people yelling at each other down the street. It's just an absurd number of stairs. A couple of people make an attempt to stop him somewhere, and it goes poorly for them.

Elsewhere, events are being set in motion where Irahl cannot see. But he's on his way out.

Eventually, more people try to stop him. At the end of another long stretch of Underground city, a group of official-looking folks are putting a real effort into blocking off the obvious exit, and some of them have weapons.

Down a side alley, into another tunnel, and then the space opens up into a... Plaza, of some sort? The floor is made of stone. The buildings surrounding it are made of stone and are hard to distinguish from one another. At at least the ceiling (also made of stone) is a lot higher than before. Cavernous. There's some kind of sculpture in the middle of it, some impressive feat of geometric stonework that gives the illusion of defying gravity despite weighing literal tons.

This is where someone finally catches him. Sounds have been echoing unhelpfully down every passageway, making it hard to tell if people are coming or going - but this series of quick footsteps comes from an upward direction before someone hits the ground about five feet in front of Irahl.

His clothes are different. His hair is better-kept. Maybe if the situation wasn't quite so tense, there'd be time to see the ways in which his face is different, the way his eyes don't have quite as vicious and sharp a gleam as they used to. But whatever Irahl can take in of him, there is Robin, having hopped down from a rooftop to put himself between him and the exit again.

"...Holy shit."

Kind of weird that he looks absolutely shocked to see the person in front of him, though.

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Irahl automatically slides the menu in front of himself and looks in its direction, but he immediately returns to his cross-armed posture while he does so. He doesn't seem to be very invested in lunch. He's more looking through the menu (and the table underneath it) than at it.

"Yeah. Got a job."

Which is not what they had originally come here for, exactly, but does incidentally check all the boxes. He'll have all the licensing he could possibly want and be slotted into productive society as if he'd ever set foot in the city before yesterday.

"...You were talking a while."

It's not a question, and nothing about his tone seems to be inviting conversation about it, but Vincent knows Irahl well enough to understand that's what it is. He doesn't know what to say or ask, but he has at least made it known out loud that he's aware that something significant must have gone on behind those closed doors.

Then, his brow suddenly lowers, and said in almost the exact same tone of voice:

"What in the world is a 'mutt wrap.'"

This is good, Vincent reminds himself. They needed a way to get Irahl taken care of, and a job means the guy won't have to worry about money or having his stuff confiscated... And he doesn't even have to lie about it, either.

'And what did you expect me to do?' Seth had asked him, 'You asked for my help. This is how I can help.'

It's selfish of him to still be upset, really. As always.

That's all percolating in his mind as Irahl mentions how long their talk was... And something about it is about to leave his mouth when suddenly the guy asks about mutt wraps, and you can't just leave a bro hanging about mutt wraps!

"Oh, they're like..." He gestures a little to indicate the size and approximate shape of whatever food this is, "Uh, have you ever had...?" He tries to think of something similar to mention, but, "...No, you haven't. Okay. It's good, try it."

There, that's his glowing recommendation. And talking about food does make it hard to focus on his oncoming spiraling depression, so he feels like he can sit forward and take a decent stab at a conversation here.

"An' yeah, we had a lot to kinda... Hash out, I guess. Not about you, just... Stuff between me an' him."

Boy, he'd... Like to explain, he feels he owes Irahl some explanation for his wild behavior, especially since this is the second time he's been very weird in his brother's direction in the last twenty-four hours. It's very easy to excuse it all when he's in a vacuum, but realizing someone else can hear it makes him self-conscious of his behavior in a way he's not used to being. He fidgets idly at the joints in his fingers while he thinks.

"My brother an' I... We... I'm realizin' we haven't talked much in the last... Eight years. Maybe nine, actually."

Edited 2024-08-03 01:32 (UTC)

As soon as Vincent gives his cryptic approval of mutt wraps, Irahl slides the menu back across the table. Hopefully the assistant catches and interprets that as Irahl's choice for their lunch, because he's not going to be more obvious or explicit about it than that.

He's too busy focusing on Vincent. When Vincent says how long it's been since him and his brother had been on better speaking terms, Irahl makes what seems like a knowing sound, as if he has any frame of reference for this at all, which he absolutely doesn't.

He's just not very good at knowing what to do when he actually wants to be supportive. It happens so rarely.

You know, it's sweet of him to even try. Vincent's thoughts on everything are such a complicated mess that he appreciates even the thought of being humored.

"Yeah, there's..." He trails off again. He wants to express that his brother is a good person and that he loves him to death. He also wants to say that there are some things his brother does that really piss him off. At the very least, he wants to summarize that there's just a lot and it's hard to explain, but nothing comes to mind as being appropriate to say, especially now that Seth might be Irahl's boss soon in a major way. So he just sighs.

"I dunno. Maybe I'll try to explain later, when we're not... Y'know."

In his hotel, in front of his assistant. He does pick at the plate of food a little bit, though, finding one of those sausage disks (he did miss them!) and sort of considering eating it. One point in particular floats to the top of his attention, though, something they really should address...

"Hey, uh, one thing did come up... I didn't realize you were, uh, big about killin' monsters?" Phrased as a question because this was definitely new information to him, "Like really big about it?"

As fascinating as this conversation is, Jandru takes a moment to sneak that menu off of the tabletop and quietly pop out the front door for a moment. They're just going to go get that order in at the front desk and come right back.

Edited 2024-08-03 02:13 (UTC)

Ah, good. It does help having one less set of listening ears around (especially since Irahl now has a better idea of how much they do actually listen), even if it's only for a moment.

He makes good use of that moment, because Vincent's surprise is also a surprise, and it needs to be properly addressed. He actually turns to more properly look in his direction when he answers.

"Yeah... I'm a hunter. That's all I do. It's my whole life."

He says this so plainly, like it should have been obvious. There's no way they hadn't talked about it on the ship.

...At least he's pretty sure.

Yeah, having Jandru step out for a moment frees him up to react openly as well.

His eyes get a little wider as Irahl says this, even though Seth just told him basically the same thing. It's clearly still a surprise to hear this so plainly from the guy he spent months in very close-quarters with.

"I mean... You said you were a hunter, but I didn't realize it was..."

He gestures in a wide arc to indicate... You know, the whole thing.

"I mean, I guess you never said it wasn't your whole life, it's just... I don't think it came up?"

"Talking about my bosses... complaining about my coworkers..."

Has he talked about anything other than his paramilitary monster-hunting career? He doesn't exactly have any other hobbies or social life. To him, it still seems pretty obvious.

Though, that's probably because he's standing on this side of a decades-long vendetta, which is so large and absolute in the landscape of his life that it fills his view until he forgets that it's a separate thing.

"...Dude, complaining about your coworkers ain't the same as sayin' you're about endin' monsters so hard you got branded about it."

He leans back in his chair and raises his hands to give the topic a little bit of space, trying to convey that he's not coming after Irahl for it or anything, he's just confused.

"I'm just sayin', I think you kinda undersold this one. An' I'm sayin' that to say that I'm sorry. Half the yellin' was before I realized you actually really wanted the job."

There's a normal-volume sigh from Irahl, which is notable in its own right. The fact that it maybe sounds a little identifiably annoyed is remarkable.

What exactly he's annoyed about has gotten a little muddied, though. He himself isn't entirely sure what about this situation is suddenly so vexing to him, but it cuts straight to one of the few things that can make him immediately upset, whatever it is.

"Don't exactly go around showing just anyone the brand of an ancient shadow organization."

Not that Vincent is 'just anyone,' but the fact still stands.

"You thought he was, what... blackmailing me into it?"

Okay, that's... fair, he supposes it's not really a casual topic of discussion. It's not like Irahl knows everything about his life. Frankly, he doesn't even know why he's chasing the point at all, since he doesn't know if he'd want to have been told if he had the choice. Irahl's clearly getting annoyed.

"No, no... It's not that, I was worried he wasn't givin' you all the details. His whole thing is so..."

Terrifying. Frankly? His brother's obsession with destroying Monsters scares the shit out of him. And hearing that Irahl jumped on board with nary a hesitation scares the shit out of him too.

"...It just moved so fast." Vincent drops his arms, looking a little helpless. "I just got you back, y'know?"

The walls go up as his mind continues where Vincent's sentence trails of. He can acutely feel the shift. It had begun when the assistant had pointed out how careless and open he'd been, and this solidifies it.

If Vincent could see it, Irahl's posture would have said it all. Arms folded tightly around himself, slouching in his seat, the sniper is retreating and hunkering down to wait out the day. It doesn't help that he'd started out half-burned-out from the day before. Everything has very suddenly become 'too much' now.

So, when Vincent's thought finally ends in a question, Irahl doesn't supply an answer.

He doesn't really need to see. The silence is pretty damning.

Great, now Irahl's upset. Nice going, idiot. Way to freak out about the most important part of his life. Way to be clingy and weird about it on the way out. Way to make it about all about you, as always. He hunches up into his own shoulders against the torrent of berating things he can't stop saying about himself. Selfish. Stupid. Crybaby.

'You always do this. You say that you want these things, but then you get upset that they have a cost. Nothing will ever be free for us, brother. You know that. People like us don't get that luxury.'

They talked about a lot, back there. Gods, is there anything he can say to fix this?

"The other thing is... After the other day, I... When he told me offered to let you come to the Capitol an' all that, I got pretty pissed off 'cause I thought he was just doin' it to get me to follow ya'."

He's sounding less and less emotional as he talks, as his own defense mechanisms start to slam down pretty hard on his willingness to say anything at all. On the plus side, he's not radiating a weird anxiety anymore, which is probably easier to listen to. He follows this train of thought to its conclusion, hoping that it's... Anything. But it's probably the last that he'll manage.

"...But I dunno, we talked about it. It was shitty of me. He's a good guy an' I don't give him enough credit for what he does. Maybe it's a weird twin thing, but we've always been so close that... I think I forget that it ain't just us two, sometimes."

Well, that's a weird admission. And who knows if it'll amount to anything. He doesn't. He leans back in his chair, looking deceptively calm even though the only thing he's really doing is becoming more distant.

Irahl doesn't know how to show that he's still taking in words even though he isn't giving any back. Even if he had been in a talking mood anymore, he certainly wouldn't know how to convey that he's trying to understand even if his life of solitude has formed a completely opposite sort of worldview to the one that Vincent is describing.

Vincent has a hard time feeling like a separate person, and Irahl has a hard time imagining being connected to another person in any way.

But he and all of the things that he's thinking and all of the words he could say stay locked up where it's safe. Vincent continues to speak to a silent room, and Irahl hopes that their lunch gets there soon so he can get this day over with.

All he can really do is hope that his words did something. Considering he's barely followed his own train of thought, he wouldn't blame Irahl if the guy had simply tuned him out. There was something important in the tangle of it all, though... Something he was trying not to forget... Ugh, what was it?

By the time he remembers, it sounds like he's changing the subject and not like he's just spent a full minute chasing down a thread of a thought.

"You thinkin' of tryin' to leave tonight?"

This is when there's a quiet sound at the door as someone (it's Jandru) slips back in with large bags of food in hand. They slink up to the table to put the bags down in front of the two men as unobtrusively as possible before scooting back to their corner station. Inside the bags, they will each find not one but two mutt wraps for each of them, along with a side of some seasoned, rustic-style tuber wedges.

By the time that Irahl is mulling over his answer and considering voicing it out loud, the door opens and lunch surreptitiously arrives. So, it is further delayed as he straightens up and listlessly pulls the bags of food closer.

It's while he's busy with opening things up and divvying up their lunch that he finally replies. It's quiet, almost drowned out by the crinkle of weird paper. But for someone like Vincent, he can not only catch it but also hear the sort of weary, maybe resigned sound to it--similar to the tone of something finally admitted after a long argument.

"...No."

He can't pretend like he's ready to pick up and leave already, even if it's exactly the sort of thing that he would normally do. And the proverbial argument hadn't been with Vincent, it had been with himself.

Vincent at least grumbles some kind of "thanks" at Seth's assistant as they deliver food, though he hesitates to dig into it while he waits for some kind of answer. Just as he's wondering if he's being given a silent treatment, he catches Irahl's quiet response.

And it's not what he was expecting. Which is... Honestly, it doesn't exactly help his not feeling shitty about himself, because now he feels stupid about everything he said and stupid that he assumed that Irahl would be more gung-ho about striking off to go fulfill his life's work than sticking around in his weird little underground town for a while. It's the second time today that he's had to check himself and realize he's really spun this entire thing way out of control.

Man, is he just a shitty friend? He tries not to show how equally embarrassed and relieved he is as he makes a comment.

"...Okay, so I don't gotta tell my landlady that rent'll be late."

There, that's a joke. He can still joke! It's also not actually a joke, rent is due this week and he was already trying to figure out how he's going to make that work with Irahl suddenly showing up in town. He'll be in some hot water if he has to suddenly leave for several weeks starting tonight.

But maybe as a sign that his mood is shifting, he reaches towards his bag to consider eating something... Though it's not where he thought it got put down. He feels around just enough to realize that Irahl is getting it for him. Irahl's probably trying to be nice to him.

"Oh," he says. Yeah, he feels like a shitty friend.

Lunch isn't genuinely all that interesting to Irahl right now, but it is a distraction, and that's great. He doesn't know how long it will take the assistant to get him whatever contract (contracts?) he needs, but anything to help that time pass quickly is good in his book.

So, he does what he can to pretend that awkward and difficult conversations have not just been had. Compartmentalize. And what is better for that than mysterious and potentially-worrying foodstuff?

The silence settles until Irahl has unwrapped and is faced with the reality of his meal.

"So... 'mutt?'"

Yeah, Irahl's got the right idea. As stupid as he feels, he desperately wants enough space to maybe pretend that every regrettable thing he's said for the last hour wasn't said. He probably owes Irahl an apology, but he can do it later, after he's gotten some rest. And when Jandru isn't in the room.

"...I swear it's not what it sounds like, it's just a mix of stuff."

It's not dog. And it's probably not even rat (though he can't actually confirm that and may not be that sure).

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GRATIA // PSL

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