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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This time, it isn't entirely Robin's fault that Irahl has clammed up. Even when Robin had been Irahl's only source of comfort in captivity, the change had always been just as abrupt. One little flame is all it takes for the walls to slam into place and for the longsuffering dragon to suddenly become easy to irritate.

Instead of answering the question--or even blinking--he asks, "Where's my stuff?"

And he doesn't wait for an answer. It'd been more of a statement of intent than anything else, as he walks around the back of the tent to look for his gear bag himself.

When he finds it, he begins to busy around. He puts all of his gear and shed articles of clothing in one spot together, he crouches down to rifle through his bag, and otherwise starts to fall into the routine he follows when out with the rest of the unit. The other guys have all quickly learned that Irahl just doesn't make himself part of the group most of the time.

Robin does at least point Irahl in the right direction. He'd put all of their gear in the same area the other side of the tents. Regardless of the ire he'd shown Irahl earlier, he at least had enough respect to not throw everything in a pile or put it somewhere inconvenient.

"...Yeah, you're welcome..." Robin mumbles to himself. Vincent hears it, of course, but says nothing. And then some food is put in front of him by Robin, and that's sufficiently distracting from his wondering about Irahl's disposition to make him drop it altogether.

Robin and Vincent chat a little while Vincent eats. Robin also eats, but it's more to feel involved than anything. Vincent asks a little about the forest at night, but Robin assures him that nothing's going to come near here while he's around. And he won't go running off in the dead of night, so Vincent has nothing to worry about.

Vincent laughs, "You know it don't fill me with confidence when you gotta go outta your way to say it."

Robin sighs, though it's almost a laugh. "Yeah, I know..."

They won't be all that long. And once they're done, Robin'll let the fire die down for a little bit before putting it out completely. The forest may be on his side, but the trees don't really appreciate a source of open flame near them either.

Their meal lasts long enough for Irahl to do an inventory of all of his gear, (which he would be doing even if he hadn't left pieces of armor and other accessories all over the place,) and have a short little wander of the vicinity around camp. He'd heard Robin's comment about his presence being enough to keep anything from bothering them, but he just wouldn't be himself if he'd sat back and accepted that statement at face value. It's also just part of his routine. Normally, he's the guy in the group who is primarily tasked with keeping the group safe in the forest.

Having a small moment to himself out here also just helps him settle. He hasn't quite gotten to align himself to this particular wilderness outside of his swim in the lake, so he he takes the opportunity to try and do so now while the other two are occupied and he doesn't have corrupting armor between himself and the trees. It has been so long, he almost worries that he'll have forgotten how. It comes back like breathing, though.

Eventually, the natural space feels more comfortable and familiar around him, and he returns to become part of camp again. It just so happens to be around the same time as the fire dying out.

Neither of these men have any reason to stop him, so Irahl is free to wander the area and acquaint himself with the forest. It's a very wild space, but the energy here feels less aggressive than what surrounded the noisy saplings close to town. Everything is receptive to Irahl now that his armor isn't obscuring his being from them. The lake and all the flora surrounding it are especially comfortable with his presence here.

When he returns to camp, Vincent will speak up from where he's still sitting near the remains of their campfire, craning his head to show he's asking Irahl.

"Hey, camping guy. What comes next?"

Embers are much more tolerable than flames, so Irahl almost enters camp like a normal person would. He takes a seat that's still a little further from the remains of the fire than the other two are, but he at least takes his place as an actual member of the group.

"According to camping with the unit? Get attacked by harpies."

He says it entirely casual and matter-of-fact, so of course it's a joke.

"Then drink. Gamble. Throw someone's shoe in the lake so the sniper has to go get it."

There's so much in those two sentences to react to.

Robin, for his part, looks briefly like he's trying to remember if he even knows what a harpy is. They don't have those here, so it must be one of the many bizarre creatures that inhabit Nor. That's all thrown out the window when he hears about this apparent shoe-throwing ritual (and he can't quite tell if Irahl is still joking or not), and he's momentarily fully consumed with the impulse to incite chaos and give it a try.

Vincent reaches over and grips Robin's shoulder with the instinctual impulse of someone telling a dog not to bark. Just grabs on so that he can't run off and do something stupid.

"Well, then, good news... Sounds like the first thing ain't a problem an' the last thing ain't gonna happen if everyone here wants to keep their arms."

Vincent shakes his friend, which Robin limply accepts. He'll be good.

"But I did bring a card deck," Vincent points out. He doesn't know if his two friends are interested, so he waits to judge their response.

Robin suddenly laughs, finding this funny, "I'll pass. I've already been trounced once today."

Edited (wow I accidentally hit reply WAY too early) 2024-08-21 18:41 (UTC)

Robin has eyeballs, so he can see the flicker of a smirk on Irahl's face when Vincent reaches over to weigh him down before he can fly away. He can also see the odd way that Irahl's face lights up a little when Vincent mentions the cards. It's like the look of suddenly recalling a good memory, but Irahl doesn't have any of those, so that can't be it.

"A real one? ...Must have cried tears of joy to get back home to that."

It's funny, for as chatty as Robin was in the dragon's underground, he gets quiet whenever Vincent and Irahl are interacting. Maybe he's less inclined to bother when he has to share the stage... Though it's just as likely that he keeps getting distracted by the spectacle of Irahl interacting amicably with someone. All that to say, he says nothing and just watches the two of them instead.

Vincent, on the other hand, has a good chuckle at Irahl's comment.

"Oh, you know it. I coulda kissed the fuckin' things."

He reaches over to give Irahl one of his signature friendly pats on the back.

"I mean, no offense to anyone's handwork, but I gotta say... Game's a lot smoother when you don't gotta peel your cards off one another."

It must be a trick of the now-nearly-nonexistent light, but there's a shift around Irahl's features that seems dangerously close to becoming a small smile.

"Bet they're all the same size too. Boring."

Robin continues to watch Irahl being inexplicably unguarded and it only further cements what the demigod feels is pretty obvious... Irahl has a huge crush on Vincent, and it's disgusting. And a little horrifying.

But his comment gets Vincent to laugh. He shifts and goes to rifle through one of his massive pockets, which contain whatever shit he grabbed from the apartment before they left.

"Shuffled in seconds. I dunno what I'm gonna do with all this free time..."

He pulls out a deck of cards wrapped in a ribbon of paper (yes, he'd brought them just in case of a situation just like this). The deck seems a little thick... Though it's nothing compared to what they were working with up in space-jail.

"Here, even if we don't play, I wanted to show you what I was talkin' about..."

He leans in, a little excited to have found something else that he'd swore to when both of them were being held against their will, and holds up some cards for Irahl to take. They've got the usual symbols on them, but each card has a front and back sheet stuck together. The front has nice, evenly-spaced, uniform holes punched in them, while the backs are nice and smooth and make these look like normal playing cards.

Irahl--oblivious to both how much scrutiny he's receiving from across the campfire and to how obvious his crush is--reaches over to accepts the cards being offered out to him.

This time, there's a definite hint of a smile as he feels over the cards... but it fades pretty quickly. He takes a few more seconds to feel over the punched surfaces, just to make doubly-sure that his disappointment is justified, before he finally comments.

"Can't read them anymore."

Robin continues to watch, amazed that neither of them have bothered to check on him. He isn't sure if he really wants to keep watching this bizarrely open interaction of theirs, but he's so morbidly fascinated that he doesn't want to risk looking away, either.

"...Huh?" It takes Vincent a few seconds to realize what Irahl is talking about. It's been a while since he's had to think about that kind of thing. But when he does get it, he sounds a little disappointed. "Oh, 'cause the thing is gone."

He knows he doesn't have to say it. They all know what "the thing" is.

But that shouldn't be cause for disappointment. Vincent bounces back pretty quickly as he realizes something else about the predicament, and he taps the fronts of the cards Irahl is holding.

"Then I guess you're finally gonna learn the normal way, huh? No more cheating."

His answer to both the comment about cheating and the prospect of homework is to audibly scoff, acting indignant even though he absolutely will begin learning Vincent's dot language as soon as they're not all trekking through the forest anymore.

Robin has been something other than the center of attention for a whole two minutes, but he's still a tugging magnet that is impossible to truly ignore. So, as Irahl bumps the cards into Vincent's hand so he can take them back, he finally looks over at him.

"Know how to read these?" he asks, dragging Robin into the conversation.

At least Robin was hyper-aware that either of them could glance over at him at any time--and manages to look merely surprised rather than all the other feelings he's having around being suddenly pulled back into what they're talking about.

"Of course," he replies, gesturing to the cards as Vincent puts them away, "I had those commissioned for him."

"Sure did," Vincent adds in a tone that's almost joking but not quite, "Real sweet."

Yes, this is officially a three-person conversation now, and Irahl seems to be at least attempting to settle into it. He shifts back to sit more comfortably, and reaches back to shake out his braid a little more, trying to speed up the drying process.

He's still speaking in Robin's direction, but he expects either one of them to answer since it's basically reminiscing.

"He tell you about our first deck?" Irahl doesn't know how much Vincent really has or hasn't said about the details of their life in space, but this is an entertaining (and one of the least depressing) places to start.

“No, he didn’t…”

This gets a curious head tilt from Robin, who’s equal parts suspicious and amazed that Irahl is continuing to include him in what’s happening here. But similar to Irahl’s shifting, Robin finally rocks back off the balls of his feet and sits down in the grass like a normal person who isn’t planning to scamper off somewhere.

“You been holding out on me?” He asks Vincent with a tentative little smirk. Vincent, in turn gives a little shake of his head.

“Guess I have. You tell him,” he pats Irahl’s shoulder, “I ain’t got the heart.”

Irahl is paying just as much attention to Robin's demeanor, and tentatively judging how this scene is playin out, as Robin is--Irahl is just quieter about it. It's easier to hide behind the fact that he's sort of the one starting the conversation. Especially with how rare it is for him to do something like this, it's easy for him to seem confident about it.

Though, he really had been hoping that Vincent would take over the actual talking part.

"It was your baby."

But, fine. They should be expecting the fact that if they want him to be the one to tell the story, they're getting the extreme-abridged version.

"Know that useless strip of paper the ships print out?" He assumes that Robin knows what he's talking about, even though he still can't fully wrap his head around the reality that Robin has supposedly been on the same bizarre trip. "...Was the only paper we had."

"...The useless strip..."

Robin squints at Irahl, trying to parse what he could possibly be talking about. If he hadn't been an engineer on the same ship for so long, he may never have figured it out--but after a few seconds, his eyes widen in surprise.

"Oh, you mean that... That stupid receipt paper? That roll in the ceiling?"

He mimes grabbing some of it up about where it would have been... He barely remembers what the stuff was for, given that his augment has been gone for ages now, but he vaguely remembers his pilots having to deal with it.

"That's the one," Vincent confirms, even though he can't see.

"You played cards with that? Damn." This finally gets Robin to laugh in a way that isn't self-hating or a little mean, "You guys must have been desperate. You told me it was bad up there, but..."

"Oh, it was not for lack of tryin'. Found, what, two pinball machines lookin' in other ships?" He 'looks' briefly at Irahl, even though he can't see, "And not a single fuckin' normal set of cards anywhere."

"Found two bars."

Forget the pinball machines, they essentially found an entire abandoned town with every almost every amenity they could hope for... except for that one simple joy.

And there's no getting around the solid confirmation that Robin has truly been in space now. Hearing him recognize exactly what they're talking about is chilling. It had been weird enough to have his own memories validated by finding Vincent again, but it's downright unsettling to not be able to tell himself anymore that maybe Robin was either mistaken or simply lying.

No, Robin knows the receipt paper.

"And the only game we played with those was Crumple Your Cards Less Than Your Opponent Does."

Miracles do happen, Irahl gets another laugh out of Robin.

"A terrible game where no one wins, I see." He shrugs a little, seeming to relax another iota or two. This is almost beginning to feel like a natural conversation to him, and even though the proof of the others having been in the Drift Fleet is strange and unsettling, he's had to accept inter-dimensional bullshit like this for a few years now.

"Explains why Vince here's so excited about a deck." He gestures to both of them, "And he said it was basically just you two, right? In the ships?"

Irahl has said something nonconfrontational, Robin received it well, asked something in return, and Irahl doesn't immediately attempt to offload the conversation on Vincent.

It's official: Robin has been integrated into an actual back-and-forth conversation. At least the first rounds of one.

"Saw other people once. They tried to kill us."

He sounds pretty dire about it, which is actually an appropriate tone for the subject matter this time. It doesn't change when he continues, though.

"Wasn't great for poker nights with the boys."

Even if it doesn't last for very long, having any sort of a back-and-forth is novel enough for Robin. He remembers that he and Irahl had a few conversations, but they were very rare and easy to ruin.

Vincent has himself a dark chuckle at Irahl's joke, "Yeah. They played too rough."

That gets Robin to glance over and address him directly, "Is that where you got shot?"

"Yeah, that's the one..." Which prompts him to stretch, maybe remembering a time when he could barely move. His mobility has fully returned and you'd never guess his life was severely threatened, aside from the scars he's still got.

"Bizarre," Robin admits quietly, before returning his attention to Irahl, "I was telling Vincent, when I was there, there were a lot more people. And they didn't..."

He stops, looks up briefly, remembering a few very distinct contradictions of what he was about to say.

"Well, they mostly didn't go around trying to kill people. But they were all folks brought in from other spots like I was. Like you were. Maybe a couple hundred of them, at some point."

Now that he can no longer avoid the reality of space being real and that all three of them have actually been there, Irahl finds himself feeling distinctly haunted by what Robin is claiming. In the scant moments that he'd allowed himself to think about it before, he'd assumed that Robin's experience had been similar to his own, or that there had maybe been a handful of others scraping an existence out of the wreckage of those ships.

Only now is he realizing that there is a possibility that they could maybe be the ones who had left the wreckage behind in the first place. Time nonsense still irritates him to his core to even consider, but he forces himself to try and believe it as being possible.

"...What was it like when you were there?"

There's a slightly stilted tension to the question, as he manages to make himself angry by asking it.

Edited (it's 6am and my birthday. i'm sleepy.) 2024-08-24 14:02 (UTC)

Vincent and Robin had spoken a little about the differences between their two versions of the bizarre prison they had been trapped in, but they hadn't gone very in-depth on anything. Vincent had been too anxious to talk about it, really, and Robin didn't want to overburden the guy back when he thought Vincent's trip might have been a singular experience.

So now, Vincent contributes, but it's because he'd also kind of like to hear how things were. He leans forward and props his big chin up on a hand, looking a little more serious.

"You were sayin' it wasn't all busted, right...?"

Robin, meanwhile, hears the frustration in Irahl's voice and knows it very well. He has a feeling that anything he'll say will be annoying to have to fold into his worldview, so he tries to keep it brief.

"Yes, working ships. Whole crews being shuttled from planet to planet. There were two 'hosts'," and he goes bring up his hands to put air quotes around that one, frowning at the memory of their captors, "Who seemed to be running things, but I still don't know who they were or if they were even real people."

As opposed to a computer program or an android or something. His frown remains.

"It was like that when I left, before I showed up back here."

Irahl is quieter than his usual happenstance pauses, and the silence continues for a few beats longer. Yeah, he's working on trying to wedge things into a worldview that is actively resistant to the change.

The difficulty mostly comes from the fact that the ghosts in the fleet had haunted him while he'd been trapped there, and now it's upsetting to try and imagine that one of them is sitting here.

"All those files..."

The names in the sealed-off room with the lab, all of the glitched-out files on the network, all those artifacts those people had left behind--Robin was with them?

"You don't know what destroyed it all?"

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