exsiliumlogs | no this is the opposite of what i wanted [OPEN]

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no this is the opposite of what i wanted [OPEN]

Date & Time: 7/5-7/10, typically in the late-late hours
Location: All over
Characters: Martin and many! YOU??
Summary: What a concept RUNNING INTO PEOPLE IN AN URBAN AREA.
Warnings: Martin is a gigantic sinkhole of misery and more misery it might make you want to throw your computer but please COME AT ME BRO

Hiding was a lot easier before the mission came along. It seemed the city was waking up, slowly but surely, to embrace the evening a little more than it did before. Lights from windows gave the streets a dim glow, played tricks with the shadows Martin's eyes were trained to follow and focus on. It was weird and unpleasant. Better for the people, maybe. But that wasn't any of his business. It never was.

He never did the right thing, whether he tried or not. Or maybe he did, but he was just unable to follow through. Either way, things would get worse, someone would get hurt...die...

He'd been training, best he could. Then that mission happened. Then, in that jungle...

It's all my fault.

If he walked fast enough, it would fall to the back of his mind, right? Or ran...

His shape flickered off walls in those glowing squares. Now and then, he saw the beams of lights of a late, late (or early) bus, and he'd skirt away like a frightened cockroach. There were quieter, empty places. Places to hide. And he'd find them, if he kept moving.

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No, this was a bad idea, Chloe suddenly decided. She should have stayed in the apartment and forgotten all about these ideas of summoning. It was stupid anyway. She pressed her lips together for a moment, taking a deep breath.

Her eyes narrowed when something that looked like dust came out of the nearby alleyway, and she took a step forward despite herself. Without needing to be prompted, she started turning this into a script.

Our protagonist continues to walk towards the source of her suspicions, heart racing. She's sure there is someone here.

Camera pans to the light then to the dark alley.

No, that sounded too cliche, she thought as she moved closer. It wouldn't inspire thrill; it'd just make people bored if they were watching a movie of this. Running would be worse, probably. Either way, Chloe was doomed to be one of those dumb girls in slasher movies.

Dimly, Martin remained, still puzzling about the maybe-imaginary hello, because he had begun to believe it was familiar. Danielle, the first thought, was so shamefully wrong as to be dashed from his mind right away. He had to work to conclude it was Chloe, and then realize that it wasn't much work at all. Six months in her company and others, he ought to recognize her voice, even if he thought he oughtn't.

And dimly still, he wondered why he was hearing Chloe at all. The footsteps hardly rung in his ears before her shadow cast a warning ribbon at the alley's corner. He stared at it long before he followed it to the feet and body of its owner, slowly looking up and finding, surprisingly, Chloe herself there.

Blearily, he squinted and stared, looking plainly confused by the reveal. He was supposed to be removed from her and everyone.

"Martin?" Chloe let out a faint and nervous laugh when she saw him looking back at her, mentally kicking herself for being so wound up. "Wh-what are you doing out here?"

She glanced around again, wondering if there was someone or something that was out here that would have forced him into the alley. People didn't just generally hide in dark corners for no reason. Looking back at him, she remembered his post on the network and their conversation. Well, maybe he thought he did have a reason to hide.

A reason she definitely didn't agree with. Robin's death might have happened without him there.

Rheumy eyes blinked slow once, then began clearing, blinking faster a few times more. Like stirring himself out of a heavy sleep, he fidgeted sluggishly, trying to straighten up out of his slouch.

"I was..." Part was spoken in an inhale, the rest in exhale. "Only stopping for...a minute." He squinted again and frowned. "No, I...was practicing. I've been here for a little while."

That made sense, right? He sure hoped so, doubting it. His conjuring hand was tucked against his side, and the other dragged against his eyes and up to his bangs to sweep them away. "Sorry."

Her head tilted as he spoke, a confused sort of look passing over her face as she listened to his explanation. "Uh..." Yeah, that sounded really bright, Chloe. She coughed, pressing her lips together for a moment before trying again. "So you've been here for awhile and only stopped for a minute?"

She shook her head. "You don't need to apologize. What... What exactly are you practicing?"

She knew that he was trying to push people away, but if she was going to run into him late at night, there didn't seem like any good reason to not try to get information out of him. Besides, she was pretty hard to get rid of.

"Mnh. The lance." His knuckles scraped up against the corner of his eye one more time, his lids still feeling heavy. "The one I make. Making it...stay. Longer."

His hand dropped onto his lap, leaving behind a slow-growing frown as awareness settled in. Before, he'd not been so careful about sharing such things; it was never proper, he knew, but sometimes there was really no helping it. And Chloe was the sort of person whose presence pulled out words and explanations by simply being a presence. It'd happened before, and it was happening again. And once he realized it, he felt knots in his chest and his gut, guilty once again of breaking faraway rules.

"Doesn't matter," he mumbled quickly, starting to untangle and shift onto his knees. "I'll go. S—" He caught himself with his hands on the ground, braced against dizziness. Headrush.

He was overextending himself, that much was obvious. And he was trying to brush her off, which she just wasn't about to let happen.

Chloe knelt down near him, reaching out and placing her hand on his shoulder. "You're tired. I think it might be time to stop for the night." She kept her voice gentle. It wasn't an order or anything, but a good suggestion. If he kept on like this, he could get himself hurt.

She moved to wrap her hand around his arm instead, to help him up when he was ready. "Maybe get you something to eat or drink, at least. Okay?" She definitely wasn't about to just let him go off on his own and pretend that he was okay, something she felt sure he would try to do.

Or apologize again.

The flip his stomach did was contrary to the others he'd been feeling as of late; it wasn't fire so much as nerves — the reaction to the proximity of others, unexpected (and undeserved, if you asked him), and not unkind. Just as he was starting to get sense back, his head felt fuzzy anew, but hardly for the same reason as before.

He didn't have enough leverage to push off and recoil like he ought to have, and instead wound up leaning toward the support. He tilted his weight before he wound up falling utterly against her, checked from falling utterly away by her hand. Teeter-totter.

"You don't have to," he was mumbling, his face scrunched up with the effort it was taking to change focus from one thing at a time to everything at once. "I'm not...supposed to. I said. I'm not supposed to get...in the way, or." Or any of that. He looked up at Chloe with a miserable grimace; sorry was already out of his throat and on the tip of his tongue.

She stumbled a bit at his weight hitting her. While she had expected that this might happen, she was still a small girl. But he needed help, and she could do this, regardless of her size. "Yeah, well... I am going to anyway. You can't stop me," she said in a mostly playful tone. He could, if he tried, and she'd probably back off if it was that important to him.

There was a smile of encouragement flashed his way when he gave her that look. Steeling herself this time, and taking on most of his weight, she stood up slowly, both hands on his arm. "Not supposed to what, anyway? Get help? Allow people to at least make sure you're not going to do something stupid?" Chloe rolled her eyes. "I promise you, it'll be fine. Can you walk, or do you need to use me for support?"

There was little Martin could do to argue, given how he was and...how she was. He was being pulled in all sorts of directions, and not by simply the hands on his arm. He didn't even know where to look or where to stand, or...

He looked up at her, watching more than listening as she went on, encouraging. She was really there, for...some reason. He didn't understand why she or anybody even bothered. He'd done nothing but let good expectations down. It was just going to be the same thing all over again, and the idea of getting Chloe hurt or worse...

"It's not fair," he croaked, still slumped there on the ground. "Chloe, I keep...Keep messing up, I. I'm trying to...fix it, but I..."

Chloe had a problem with not being able to really give up on anyone. Not Tori, not Derek. And as far as she knew about Martin, he wasn't really to blame for whatever mass of guilt he was carrying around. Or, at least, he hadn't done something so horrible to her that she wouldn't want to help out.

But that was just how she was, she knew. Everyone said it about her. Too nice.

"What do you keep messing up, and why do you have to fix it?" She paused, chewing on her lip.

"A lot," he breathed, dragging his knuckles across his forehead and grimacing. "I have to fix...me, and get better. So I stop...messing up. I keep trying to, but."

He stopped, digging a knuckle in the space between his eyebrows until it hurt, twisting and letting the hand go again. So much for fixing things; wasn't he falling into the same bad habit right then and there?

"I'm not supposed to talk to anybody," he muttered to the ground and her shoes. "People. I have to stop."

"You can't fix people," Chloe said quietly. Become stronger, more controlled, yeah. But the word "fix" meant that there was something wrong in the first place, and that was a horrible thing to believe at all.

She took a deep breath. "You remind me of someone. A fr-friend, back home." Despite the situation at hand, she looked almost amused. "He'd tell me the exact same things. Can't be around people, shouldn't take the risks. Too bad for you, I think I might be a little stubborn, huh?" She tried for a grin, but it looked slightly strained. "Whatever... rules you have back home, I don't think they apply here."

Martin stared, looking confused right away at being compared to anyone at all. It was in the context of Darkovs, of course, and he thought there was no way nobody could be at all like one like him. Not what she meant, of course, and that was plain as she went on.

Her forced grin was a little knife in his gut, twisting guilt further in. She was too kind. Didn't she know how bad it was to be kind to him — even now? After Robin—

It just gave him the horrid vision of her mangled in some awful way, all within reach, but ultimately unsaved. Just like always. Worse, what if it was like the Byzantine? What if he'd be lifting his hand to—

"You'll get hurt," he insisted, trying to talk over his noisy thoughts. "Or killed. I can't...I don't...want that. But every time something goes wrong, I make it worse and people just..."

Chloe hesitated for a moment before putting her hands on his shoulders and staring at him. There was a lot that put her in danger. Her existence, back home, meant danger for her. Execution, really, if she couldn't escape the lab when she got back. And even though she had faced things that put her in that path before, Martin's words still were enough to twist her stomach anxiously. Nobody sane wanted to throw themselves into mortal danger. But even though she didn't really understand his situation, she didn't want to run either.

That just wasn't who she was anymore.

"If I get hurt... I-if I die... That's not your fault, okay? And I won't. I-I've got that whole resilient, hard to kill thing going on by this point." She laughed nervously, pausing for a moment. "You can't do things alone, Martin. Okay?"

Father was the best, Martin thought suddenly, clouding his hearing of her plea. And he died, too. Because I was there. Even though he was the best.

Everything in his head was screaming to jerk him away and refuse, despite wanting, to accept her kindness and friendship. What did he know about it, anyway? Darkovs don't make friends. Alex would laugh. Alex would—

Martin shuddered, ducking his head, and began to wriggle away from her hands, scooting back on the filthy ground until there was space enough to stand. His stomach roiled anew and his veins throbbed. He felt another flash of heat, of inconceivable agitation; he still didn't know what to do with it or where it was from.

He had to get away.

"I can't," he was mumbling, over and over. I can't. I can't. He took slow, staggering steps, quickly spurred into a run by a sudden chill down his spine. He just had to get away, and it'd be fine. Had to be. Had to be.

"Martin..." He was pulling away, and Chloe had no idea what she should do now. Part of her wanted to move forward when he scrambled back, but she knew that probably wasn't the best idea. This was something that he needed to work out on his own, even if that made her worried for him.

"Martin, wait!" Despite the conclusion, she couldn't stop herself from yelling after him after he began to run. She took a step in the direction he went, and then stopped.

She couldn't force him, didn't want to. So she stood there for a few more minutes before turning around. Tonight wasn't going to be a good night for summoning, and it was late. And if she didn't leave, she was going to go after him.

"Some heroine," she muttered to herself.

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no this is the opposite of what i wanted [OPEN]

flexes~~

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i'm so sorry i've been slow at responding e_e

IT'S OK your tags are worth the wait!

awww /wiggles

tells no lies

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