exsiliumlogs | You're all my friends

Entry tags:

You're all my friends

Date & Time: Before groundhogging it or after depending on preference
Location: Exsilium proper/ wilderness/ various
Characters: Chloe Frazer and you as a fond farewell
Summary: a year and a half of thievery and trouble hits its last few notes
Warnings: VIOLENCE some of it

A: E x s i l i u m

She's back to normal now. Residual lacquer stuck to her nails, hair still neatly trimmed at the edges and her trousers aren't the dirt-stained mess left behind of a little over a year's worth of close calls and fire fights, but she is herself again, and whatever magic that Facilier had carefully stuck in under her skin with a few nice words and a friendly gesture have-- for the most part-- been shaken off. Which is to say it's almost dysphoric having to readjust after being recalibrated so completely that even her old routines and habits feel unfamiliar: walking to the market to trade off another batch of heavy (only slightly roughed-up) furs is something more akin to watching video of the ground shifting forward, of footsteps in the snow and crowds filtering off out of focus.

Doesn't feel like there's weight in her arms or the sting of bitter cold on her cheeks.

Doesn't even feel like she's capable of recognizing any of the familiar faces she passes-- and she does pass them: without a second thought or even the uncertain shift of her attention that comes from purposefully dodging someone close.

How bloody rude. Particularly when she's not careful enough to keep from clipping the occasional passerby.

B: E x s i l i u m w i l d s

This, though. This is where she flourishes. These days, anyway. After too much time spent snagged on emotions and vital decisions, solitude and silent snowfall are more comforting than things like central heating or idle banter. Simple tasks are easy to fixate on (pull wire, wrap twig, bend branch, insert bait and wait), numbing pinpricks running just under layers of insulated clothing precede pain from too many hours of it spent out in the cold. Veins going tight in an effort to cling to any remaining heat. Unappealing, unattractive, inhospitable work.

And Chloe's smiling to herself through the chilled cracks of her frost-split lip as she goes about it.

Not that most people would feel right at home in a yeti-infested wilderness.

C: Wildcard

OOC: pick a different scenario or location, whichever suits you best, and we'll make it happen!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The sound of a gunshot gets his attention more than anything else. Nate finds himself instantly on alert, pistol already drawn as he wordlessly slips out of the little tent he had been browsing in. He does his best to keep it hidden to keep from startling any of the natives as he moves, most of which are already spooked enough to be moving away from the source. Convenient, that it leads him right to the crime scene.

Well. Almost.

"Chloe--" Nate calls out, immediately glancing around for the source of aggression. Nothing. Judging by her posture and the fact that her defender isn't drawn... "What the hell was that?"

She shouldn't be surprised he's turned up now rather than when she was in a panic back in some pseudo-Bornean camp, wide-eyed and disoriented from the illusions. Rather than the moment Facilier asked where her friends had been.

And when that thought settles in-- when she realizes she'd left Facilier a few paces off-- Chloe turns on Nate, gun raised, bright eyes narrowed beneath tangled strands of dark hair. "Don't you dare, I won't fall for it again."

He's looked down the barrel of Chloe's gun before, but that doesn't make it any less terrifying. He raises his hands in surrender and takes a few steps back, looking bewildered.

"Hey, woah, easy--its me," Nate starts, making sure his gun is pointed upward rather than at her. "--Its Nate."

In the back of his head, part of him wonders if that's more or less incentive for her to shoot. He really needs to keep better track of his contacts.

Her expression falters only briefly in response, swallowing thickly through the tension in her jaw.

"Prove it."

"Prove it?" he starts, looking confused. More than anything, he wants to know what the hell set her off, but since she has a fucking gun pointed at him, he's not really in a position to ask questions.

"Ok ok, fine," he starts, scratching his head with the butt of his gun. Think, Drake. "--uh, how about that time you almost left me drowning in lava in Agartha? That's pretty memorable. Or that time you left me to take out some armored thug armed with a rocket launcher so you could throw a grenade. Nepal? Something about 'desperate times'. You know, you never told me what that meant."

He takes a second to pull the ring over his head and holds it out for her to inspect, offering a very light smirk. "Look, I know everyone and their grandfather is looking to smoke my ass, but I promise. Its just me, Chloe."

The facts he could list easily. He'd replicated Borneo on a whim, he knew about Harry, Lazarevic-- Nate's promise doesn't exactly come anywhere close to cutting it-- but the intonation and the sincerity he's attempting to convey comes across effectively enough to make it worth the risk: Chloe drops her chin, chest tight, before she lowers the line of her aim.

"Sorry." She exhales, which doesn't really make up for nearly putting a bullet into him, but it's all she can manage to offer up at the moment.

Edited 2014-02-19 04:29 (UTC)

He doesn't put the ring back on right away. Once she lowers the gun, he starts to slowly approach and once he's sure she isn't going to aim at him again, he grasps her shoulders.

"Don't worry about it," he offers with a fleeting grin. It instantly falls into something a little more serious. "What's got you so spooked?"

The pressure of his palms against her shoulder's grounding enough. Something to focus on till he-- inevitably-- decides to ask what's got her making a bloody scene in just about every sense of the word.

She ought to tell him, but Facilier's question is still stuck like a burr in the back of her mind.

"Have I seemed off to you recently?"

Answering a question with a question -- typical Chloe. He lets go of her to slip the ring back around his neck and gives her a once over, like its a trick question.

"Off like how?" he grunts. "Off like 'shooting a round off in the center of a civilian marketplace' off? Because that's not really 'off'."

Her lips thin out in response, completely unamused. Where Nate draws back to reset his beloved necklace, Chloe goes to holster her defender, furs hefted up with effort across the muscle of her forearm. "I meant before now."

Christ.

He senses that he's losing the charm battle here, so he simply sighs and scratches his head, trying to think back on the last couple of weeks. It was hard to discern, when he didn't...well, live with her. Not to mention the fact that his perception was a bit skewed from his impression of her three years prior.

"Maybe a little?" he offers with an uncertain raise of an eyebrow, like a small child being quizzed by a teacher who just caught him sleeping on the desk. "Why? What does that have to do with what just happened?

It's not the answer she'd hoped to get, but it is the one she'd been expecting.

"Nothing." Which doesn't come out low or self-pitying or anything of the sort: he didn't notice; he wasn't obligated to. "I'm fine and it won't happen again."

"What won't happen again? Chloe, talk to me--what the hell is going on?" Nate is starting to sound agitated now, the light concern almost blinking out of existence and being replaced by light annoyance. "You can't expect me to hear that gun go off--" He gestures accusingly to her defender. "--in the middle of the street in broad daylight and walk away from it."

Is she trying to protect him? That would annoy him even more, so he pushes the possibility out of his head. No, clearly someone had just made her really angry...or she was defending herself.

"Did someone attack you?"

Both, technically. In a sense.

Chloe shifts back behind the heap of fur, keeps it up against her chest like a buffer between them. Between herself and talks of vulnerability. She'd only ever spoken about Charlie or Nate under someone else's sway-- never herself.

"You could say that." Telling the truth means running the risk of exposing why she'd ever been to see Facilier in the first place.

"I handled it."

Nate isn't having any of that. Regardless of the fact that she just pulled a gun on him two seconds ago, he slips his arms between the furs and takes half the stack from her to make his point.

He's also careful to dance backwards to avoid kicks to uncomfortable places in case she tries to stop him.

"I know a thing or two about how you handle things, Chloe," Nate remarks, shifting his weight a bit. If that shot had done any lethal damage, there would be a lot more screaming going on. And if she had won the fight, she wouldn't have been so spooked by his appearance. "Can we skip the dance and get down to the real answer here?"

Jesus Christ, Nate, will you ever stop pulling apart the defenses she sets up?

It's a long, weighted moment of tension while the crowds slowly start filtering back in before she speaks up again. Flicks her gaze off of him like she's confessing to a bloody crime. "I was being...controlled."

Huffed out like nonsense. Nothing.

It certainly sounds like nonsense. But he's seen some nonsense in his time, so when he questions it, its only for elaboration. After all, Nathan Drake's mind never stops moving once he's given a puzzle to solve.

"Controlled?" he starts, thinking back briefly to when she had pulled her gun on him. Probably something that involved hallucinations. "By what?"

Not 'who'. He could figure that one out on his own, he thinks, if he gets this answer out of her. Maybe.

That much she knows. Which makes elaboration easier than it might otherwise be, if only for the fact that his persistence would eventually win out anyway.

"His name's Facilier-- you've brushed shoulders with him before, actually. At Victor's little work party." Chloe pauses, purses her frost-chapped lips for a moment. "By then I was already well under whatever supernatural nonsense he'd used."

Facilier. His eyes widen for a second, and then immediately narrow as he starts putting some pieces together. Yeah. He remembered him.

His eyes only drop to her neck briefly before looking back up to her eyes. Inwardly, he is kicking himself for not asking about that stupid necklace earlier.

"I knew him before that, actually," Nate admits, adjusting his hold on the furs with a small grunt. "He came in with me when I showed up on the moon." Part of him is glad that he elf...person...healed him before Facilier tried to cut a deal with him. He wouldn't have known any better.

"Then I'd say you're lucky you didn't get swept up in all this." A genuine enough statement serving as a secondary warning with all the appropriate emphasis. Don't get involved.

Yeah, good luck. Still, he offers her an easy little grin.

"Guess the good ol' Drake luck's still going strong," he adds, only half feeling it. He still hasn't decided whether this experience in Exsilium was a lucky break or a life ruiner.

He's gotten what he's needed out of her though, so he'll change the subject to keep from driving her off. Shifting the weight in his arms again, he asks:

"You...taking these somewhere?"

Edited 2014-02-19 07:39 (UTC)

"Last shipment to the edge of the market. Not a charming job, but it gets transports more in trade." There's only a slight pause before she adds, contemplatively, setting off in her original direction, " Might take a bit more sweet talking to manage it after all this."

He happily follows and falls in step beside her. "No worries about that. You've got me here. Couldn't find a better transport bargaining chip anywhere in the tundra."

He takes a brief look around before glancing down to his counterpart. "I've been living with them -- sort of. Couple of them picked up on how much I talk to the less-native sorts. Not sure if they're warming up to the idea. Its kind of hard to warm up anything around here." For emphasis, he fakes a shiver.

She stops for a moment. Blinks at that.

"You're moving into the city proper? Never thought I'd see the day." But judging by the wary, faint smile at the edge of her collar, she's glad to hear it. "Try not to destroy it all, would you?"

He keeps walking even after she stops, because he senses that look she's giving him.

"Seemed like an ok idea," he adds awkwardly, shrugging. He could never stay tied down to one place for too long, that wasn't a secret, but the activity level gave him something to do. Things to steal. Culture to learn.

Until he inevitably figured it all out, got bored, and left again. Before that sinks in too deep, he throws a smirk back at Chloe's comment.

"Trying to bridge the gap, not widen it."

Edited 2014-02-19 08:19 (UTC)

A...ish

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject