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 raises a very good point, one that gets a thoughtful sound out of Vincent before he begins rifling through his own recollections of what he'd said and what had been happening before and after here at home.

"He's been better," he finally decides, "Hasn't come home drunk off his ass to bleed all over my bathroom in a while. But then learnin' that he's the guy who did your kidnappin' an' all that, and then all the shit he told me about yesterday... I don't know. It's pretty fuckin' bad."

Ah, it's their friend 'disappointment', back again to linger in his voice as he tries to parse his feelings about a bunch of things he hasn't really given himself a chance to process yet. He's so mad at Robin that he feels exhausted just trying to comprehend the scale of it. Another piece of paper gets crumpled up and dropped onto the pile at his feet.

"...I don't know. He's on some thin fuckin' ice with me right now."

It's a bizarre, backwards day when Irahl has even the briefest thought of maybe wanting to reach over and make some kind of contact with another living soul, but--again--seeing anything like anger or hurt on the face of his friend has a weirdly provoking effect on him. It brings up the urge to fix or to make it stop, but he doesn't know how to do that. The only thing he can imagine is reaching over from where he's sitting on the floor to like... pat Vincent on the shin or something.

Luckily, the rest of his brain is well aware of how wildly out of character something like that would be for him. He doesn't even have the natural impulse for it, which would have the chance of at least accidentally being passed along to his limbs before he'd catch it.

So, instead, he does some thinking for a response that would actually make sense.

"Hopefully he does some thinking while we're gone... And it sounds like some ultimatums need to be made when we get back."

Some less-intense people might have called them 'boundaries,' but Irahl's world only has room for ultimatums and threats.

"If you don't want to, I'm real good at it."

Vincent certainly wouldn't have minded a pat on the shin, but Irahl's words also seem to do the trick. Some of the weight of his thoughts ease off and his expression turns to a smile, even if his mood is being lifted by the idea of his Robin's future suffering.

"Let's both do it," he suggests, no hesitation, "So he knows he's got nowhere to run."

He abruptly gives up on sorting the rest of his pile of papers in favor of slumping down further into his couch and settling in for whatever's left of his evening.

Irahl honestly hadn't expected Vincent to jump on the ultimatum train quite so quickly, let alone escalate it.

He doesn't mean to chuckle a little under his breath--he'd really intended on backing off of this long-distance haranguing of Robin--but he can't help it. It's no surprise to anyone that the quickest way to Irahl's heart is to increase the threat level.

Vincent's disappointment shifting into a smile doesn't hurt either.

"If you insist."

Edited (669 comments... nice.) 2024-09-25 04:19 (UTC)

He nods a little. He does insist. Vincent isn't really that excited to metaphorically (and maybe literally) clobber Robin into compliance, but Irahl's offer to take care of it for him really helped.

The idea of going all-in together sounds pretty tolerable. An insurmountable problem might actually be surmountable. They might even have a little fun doing it.

"Gods..." He sighs, rubbing at one of his eyes, smirking to himself, "Can't believe the Capitol's startin' to sound like a fuckin' vacation."

Ah, Irahl had been passively curious about Vincent's opinions about the upcoming trip--namely when it came to what seemed like an aversion to the Capitol.

He'd awkwardly been there for the conversation between the brothers; he knows it's complicated. So, because he isn't going to straight-up ask whether or not the sentiment about the trip is because of his brother or about the city itself, he goes at it from a different direction, in his own way.

"Hate leaving your hole in the ground that much, huh?"

It's not a bad direction. It gets Vincent to chuckle and steeps him in a familiar topic of conversation. Irahl's never understood his love for the Underground.

"Hey, I like my hole in the ground, okay?" He defends his home as he always does, "It's too hot out there an' their food sucks."

And as much as he'd love to keep listing mundane complaints he has about the Capitol, he knows that Irahl knows there's more to it than that. He also thinks back to the conversation he and his brother had while Irahl was in the room behind them. And the fight he overheard back at Seth's temporary office on Second. The guy'd probably love to know how Vincent's going into everything, given the weird dynamic he's been thrown into.

"An' my brother's there, an' I got kicked out of the military there... An' I still ain't a big fan of their politics. Between all of that I haven't been back in about a decade."

Despite the fact that Irahl has become slightly more vocal in his time knowing Vincent, he just as often banks on Vincent knowing him well enough to not expect an audible acknowledgement of everything he says. So, when Irahl does make a sound, it's still significant in some way.

This time, the acknowledging grunt that he gives sounds like a knowing one. While he might not identify with Vincent's desire to live down in the dark, these thoughts somehow resonate.

It's probably attached to something significant, but of course that's not what he says when he does finally use his words.

"Won't bump your head as much, though."

Their months apart have not at all dampened his ability to read Irahl's many kinds of silences and sounds. Even a small noise of knowing is a relief to hear, since Vincent hasn't been all that sure lately whether his distaste for the Capitol is still as justified as he thought it was.

And to the comment, he's not sure if Irahl's trying to make him feel better or simply deflecting away from the heavy topic, but it works either way.

"Ain't that the truth. An' it's not like I'm gonna be out picketing or anythin', m'probably just gonna be holed up in a hotel room or somethin'. Or..." He pauses momentarily, realizing he has no idea what he's actually going to do when Irahl is busy if his brother doesn't have plans for him already, "...I dunno. Doing... Touristy stuff?"

That mental image takes Irahl by surprise enough to elicit a short sound of amusement from him. The picture of Vincent standing head-and-shoulders above a tour crowd, dourly looking at a landmark that he can't even see, is too sudden and vivid. He wonders if Seth is the kind of person to spitefully arrange for that sort of thing, to start enacting his revenge for Vincent refusing to visit for so long.

"You a museum guy?... Wine tasting... Shopping for souvenirs..."

He trails off as he genuinely struggles to think of what other dumb things normal people do for fun while visiting new places.

"Oh yeah, I'm a huge... Fan of..." He can't decide which of the three is the more absurd thing to sarcastically pretend he likes, so he waffles until he finally decides, "Definitely all of those things."

But that does at least give him an idea; he snaps his fingers, "I can hit up some bars, I guess. See if anyone of 'em are any good. I gotta see what the competition is like out there, an' all."

Since he's, you know. The manager of a bar out in space.

"You'll have to give me your review."

Which is about when Irahl really thinks for the first time about how it's probably pretty likely that him and Vincent will be housed in the same--or at least similar--space while they're at the Capitol.

This isn't a revolutionary thought by any means, between their time spent in the same ship and then in the same apartment, but the idea of someone potentially being around when he returns 'home' from working is. It's a very strange thought, in fact. Coming back to the ship after scavenging trips hadn't counted.

He knows how he is when he works, and then retreats back to whatever cold, little bolthole he has. Having someone else there would be a jarring experience, and he can't begin to guess whether it would be in a good or a bad way.

He supposes there's no way to know the answer to that one until it happens.

"Yeah, I'll let you know," He agrees with a smile. "Shit, maybe we can finally just go to a normal bar like I'd been swearin' all those months up in space-jail."

It'll be a shame if Irahl experiences a Capitol bar before Vincent can take him to any of the bars he likes here in Skeleton City... It almost feels like a point in his brother's favor and not his, even though that doesn't make any sense. One thought leads to another, and Vincent shrugs.

"I mean, that's assumin' Seth'll let either of us go runnin' around. For all I know I'mma be on house arrest and you're gonna be doin' some kinda crazy obstacle course twenty-four-seven."

It's either because Irahl is so delusional that he'd been more successful than he'd thought at convincing himself that their bar in space had been real, or because he simply has so little regard for the normal bar experience, but he hadn't thought about the fact that they haven't actually done that yet until Vincent brings it up.

He doesn't mull over this fact for long though, before Vincent brings up something that immediately occupies far more of Irahl's attention. It's something he has already been wondering off and on since he'd first signed the contract.

"...Yeah. Wish I knew how they did things out here... And I've never seen a desert before."

"Oh...? I guess..."

Irahl did say his city's from somewhere with a lot of forest, not the desert... But the guy's city has remained so Capitol-like in his mind's eye that he'd kind of assumed that Irahl must have at least seen the desert at some point. But Irahl never actually said anything of the sort, so...

"I mean, it's hot an' dry. A lot of sand." He offers up the description with very little fanfare, since he's not a huge fan of the desert himself...

Though he perks up a moment later, as something of more substance occurs to him, "One thing's that... Especially durin' the summer months, it gets so hot 'round midday that the city kinda takes a break. Most folks head home or go underground for a while. And then it picks back up again once it cools down in the evening. They may have you on kind of a weird schedule, since a lot of places open late..."

Edited 2024-09-26 04:38 (UTC)

Vincent can't see Irahl's frown as the myths about deserts turn out to be true. He once more finds himself thankful that he'd recently been able to spend some time at a real lake, because he has a feeling that he'll need to call upon the memory when being subjected to the literally-worst environment for his particular combination of lineages.

He wonders how similar it will be to the concrete 'deserts' of ruins in certain parts of the city, which had never been great, but he's at least used to them. And the hours of activity in those place seem to roughly match.

"Good to know. Any other tips?"

He's already trying to imagine a few steps ahead, wondering if his dark-colored cloak will be switched out for a paler one. At least he'll have an excuse to be well-covered-up either way.

"Keep drinkin' water," he says, "Hope you ain't prone to heatstroke..."

Vincent scratches his head again, wracking his brain for more things that might be helpful to someone who's never been to the desert or the Capitol... He's having a hard time thinking of anything that isn't likely to have changed as some point in the last decade.

"I dunno, it's been so long... I might be comin' in almost as fresh as you." He gestures to himself, smiling, "An' bein' blind's made me pretty good at askin' stupid questions, so feel free to sic me on anythin' you're tyin'a figure out."

Oh, that's actually a really good idea, and his affirming grunt is the kind that says he's taking that piece of advice to heart. He's not normally one to delegate or rely on the help of others, (the 'teamwork' section of his report card has consistently below-average marks,) but he's logging this one away in an important space in his brain.

This is about the time that he finishes with his braid. Even though it will still be some time before they're actually at the capitol, he has spent extra care in making a neat, orderly plait. It's a therapeutic act that at least makes him feel more put-together.

He voluntarily tricks himself into feeling like the matter of the capitol is wrapped up as well.

"Whatever it's like, it'll be a walk in the park compared to space." And that's all that matters.

It's a good thing they started talking about this, Vincent realizes. For as much as he tries to be helpful and aware of his friend, he can't really share information or ideas if he hasn't put any thought into the thing himself. He'd been ignoring it so hard that he hadn't even considered that he doesn't really know where to go when they get there.

But he's also pretty confident that they'll be able to figure it out if they're together. It's a thought that aligns nicely with Irahl's comment, which gets Vincent nodding in agreement.

"They got breathable air, I know that much for sure," he says, "An' I dunno what kind of 'tests' my bro's cooked up, but I doubt any of 'em involve engine coolant."

Which reminds him, suddenly, of one more thing he really should bring up.

"--Oh, trip out's real borin', though. Gonna have to entertain ourselves for the better part of a week."

"It's that long, huh?" he asks in a voice that is nearly as casual as everything else, but it's still pretty clear that this is coming as a significant surprise.

He'd known that the trip was going to be a long one, but the longest trip by vehicle back home maxed out at a couple of days, and the few times he'd had to endure those had been a challenge. Even with how many windows this thing probably has, the idea of spending nearly a week inside a flying box causes his anxiety to spike a little bit.

For once, he's thankful for his time spent trapped on the Eclipse, as it has surely given him some practice for this upcoming trip. However, unlike the Eclipse, he won't have a broken engine to tinker with.

"Guess you better bring your deck."

"Already packed," he answers, since that's the one thing he did think of ahead of time. "Guess you finally get to learn to read 'em."

He's planning to take them through his favorite corner store on the way out. That way they can grab snacks and whatever else they can find that might stave off boredom. Stretching his arms up towards the ceiling, he sinks even further back into his couch.

"With all that time... Fuck it, maybe I'll take up knitting."

Another genuinely good idea from Vincent. It's the perfect project for their roadtrip. Learning new things is generally of little interest to Irahl without at least the ghost of a reason behind it, but there's plenty of motivation inherent in this one. He's used to having very little in the ways of hobbies or anything else to interrupt his boredom with, so this will be all he needs.

Finding something to occupy Vincent with might be a little more of a challenge. Though, Irahl's already voting for his current idea.

"Blind guy with hands your size? Knitting is perfect."

Vincent wasn't considering it with much seriousness, but Irahl really put a final nail in the coffin with that one. He smirks as he tries to think of a good and equally sarcastic comeback--but something suddenly occurs to him that gets a good laugh out of him.

"I'll knit you a scarf," he says, far too tickled by his own thought. "It'll be a present."

"I don't deserve it," Irahl answers, and the response is so immediate and delivered with such casual coldness that it's almost too believable--like maybe this has triggered some flare of self-loathing that he isn't able to catch before it leaves his mouth.

But, no, this comes from a much different and perhaps even stronger impulse within himself. After a beat, he continues with the same gravitas.

"You know who does, though? ...Robin."

Their dear friend deserves something for all the hard work he has been putting into his self-improvement.

"Ah," Vincent says, as if this is the only logical answer, "Then I've got my project."

Irahl has given him the greatest gift of all--he's freed him of having to do even a remotely good job of it. This is really going to make the trip. He's so happy.

"I'll let you pick the colors."

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indigochild - 2024-09-27 03:19 (UTC) - Expand

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