exsiliumlogs | found you [OPEN]

Entry tags:

found you [OPEN]

Date & Time: Sept 30 - Oct 6
Location: all over the danged moonbase
Characters: Martin, all sorts of folks
Summary: He's not a lion he can talk to people now
Warnings: BUH...

Martin had barely found his footing on solid ground before it was settled on stranger tiles. Yet stranger things had, and would happen, wouldn't they? He stressed little on his own behalf, only wincing and worrying on behalf of others. His friends...the old and new. He couldn't have warned them, could he? Not with the deal he had made. Simply being around others turned out to not be enough.

And those others...He couldn't wait to see them. To speak to them! To understand, better than what a cat's ears and nose could spell out, how they've endured. The scale and scope of their stay in this place still hadn't wholly formed in his mind, still so used to working step by step, piece by piece.

He wandered, often too brisk, at times distracted by the sights outside, and sought those familiar things out. The nature of the base only frightened him for moments, easily forgotten in the face of what he was really after.

Where are they?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Collette had decided to attempt the monumental task of laundry. To start with, she bothered with only the necessities, underthings and things of a sort that having them be unclean was unpleasant in multiple ways.

It'd been a creative and masterful disaster.

Still, she can't help but feel proud of herself when she has the basket of damp laundry on her lap, something more like a milk crate than a basket proper holding all the clean things she needs to find somewhere to hang. She's in that process, chewing on her lower lip, when she crosses paths with Martin.

Like Ico, Collette was one of very few Martin could recall on visuals alone. Unlike him, hearing her would have been just as likely to spark his memory; she was that kind of person, recognizable on many levels. Not very spectacular for most, but Martin's mind and the life he led with it wasn't much like most.

And all that was why he could stop right away upon seeing her, eyes widening. He didn't have to wait for her name to rise to the surface of his mind.

"Collette."

The voice makes her stop, hands clenching around her rails and pulling her to an abrupt, jarring stillness after the smooth motion forward. Her head whips around, eyes wide. A smile follows an instant later, after Martin makes an impression on her mind and eyes as indelible as ink.

"Martin?" she exclaims. "Martin! Oh my goodness, Martin, is that you?" She feels herself tearing up, bringing her hands up and resting one on the awkward container of her damp laundry, the other rubbing under her eyes before she gestures for him to come closer. "Martin, where have you been?" She asks, half a laugh, halfway crying.

He brightens immediately, feeling himself well up with another surge of joy. It was out of place in the miserable moonbase, but it was completely undeniable and something he'd struggle to evade if he had any mind to.

This is what he wanted, after all: Finding his friends, seeing them smile and know him.

Hearing his name a third time, he moves. At the fourth, he is quicker, having no mind to negotiate with the laundry...crate...and simple bending to offer some kind of hug that he can once he's close enough.

"You're here, too -- I'm so glad...!"

Collette clings to him past the awkward bulk of the crate, not caring if it digs into her, nor caring overmuch if it digs into him. She feels her tears well up and spill down her cheeks, hot and warm, relieving even as they start off the slow process that'll leave her congested and sniffling.

"You're real, you're really here! We kept looking for you, me and Kate, and I know Koltira had to too, and Bariyan before he was gone, and and -- and we couldn't find you, we met your sister but not you and the thing that had her said the most horrible things but you're he-here," she hiccups, so hapyp that it unwinds all the tension that's been making shadows dance behind her eyes since she first came up to the moon, an unwilling transport. "I'm not dreaming, am I? I'm not going to wake up and this won't be real?"

Her voice cracks as she asks; please be as real as anything can be around here. She's lost people, they all lose people, that it makes even the promise of one returning priceless. Especially someone she likes.

Her tears, and the joy that came with them, made it impossible for Martin to guard against any of his own (he had so little defense against it as it was). He laughed out against the feeling of fingers digging at the back of his shirt and the weird feeling hearing her voice in just one ear as they pressed together. All the while, he cried.

A lot of what she said was lost in that, but he heard key words that only stirred him more. Koltira. Bariyan. Sister. Here.

The question didn't register for a fair length of time, and there was no answer until he could pull away enough to find breath enough for one. He blinked and shook his head free of some of her hair, stuck against his face, and shifted to crouch before her. It was easier than slouching, and he wasn't going anywhere anyway.

I'm not dreaming, am I? He smiled once he'd finished wiping at his face with a length of sleeve.

"No, I'm here. So are you. See?" He lifted and held out his hand.

She laughed, pushing the hair that had clung to him back behind her ear, then her shoulder as an extra measure against its intrusion. She sniffed and tried to wipe away the snot dripping down from the point of her nose with the back of her hand.

"Sorry," she murmured, crying still. She had to swallow past a lump in her throat, a better one than what's plagued her in recent history. His statement was so simple and to the point. Im' here. So are you. See? She didn't rely on just her eyes for this, reaching out with her hand and taking his. A squeeze for reassurance is meant for her as much as it is a way of saying without speaking that she could believe this.

The exhaustion faded, temporarily replaced with the warmth of an unexpected kindness from the universe and all parts of it that matter. Friends. ""Yeah," she said. "I think I do see."

Martin's fingers curled around the hand and held firm, and he blinked them back into focus, only to get blurred out again. It just made him so happy, and not just because it was Collette he'd met again. Her and the others – his friends he'd known before...he was there again and he could communicate his feelings the way he ought to. It was just a matter of finding words and gestures and all the complex things that were difficult, but at least he wasn't a quadruped anymore.

"You're," he already started laughing, "you're crying more than I am...and that's. Almost all I've been doing since I got here!"

Her laughter was a wet, choked sound, what with her sinuses acting up at the same time. She had to sniff and suck it all in hard and fast just to be coherent. "I have a lot of -- feellings!" she said at last. "I'm really happy." Happy and relieved, but getting that out too is proving beyond her for the moment.

Reflexively, she squeezed his hand again, another reassurance to both herself and to him. She's okay, she promised. "Besides, it'd look silly if just one or the other of us was crying! That's what friends do." Cry together?

Sometimes.

Cry for each other?

Sometimes that, too.

His nose crinkled with how wide he smiled, ducking his head and hiding it away, forehead thumping a little against the armrest he's crouched near. Still, he held fast, squeezing a little as his head lifted up again, as if he were about to stand again, but didn't follow through.

"I'm really happy, too," he said. "I couldn't talk to you before...and it was awful. Because I couldn't figure out how to make you know...I was still here." He swallowed, shaking his head a little, still smiling. "I was here still, and you helped me. You didn't know it was me!"

She has to turn his words over in her head to start making sense of them. "You were here? Where -- how?" How hadn't she picked up on him? Yet she'd helped him? Her happy confusion showed on her face, leaving her seeming perplexed. She can't stop smiling. She doesn't want to.

"Martin, what happened with you?" She wanted to apologize for his sister, wanted to say all sorts of things, like we should have found you sooner, only she doesn't have the breath to get all those statements out.

His mouth opened and closed a couple of times between her words, never quite finding voice to speak through them. He listened instead. And in listening, the smile ebbed, twitching now and then on one side as he sniffled, and his brow crinkled with a new strain.

"Ah," he sniffed, ducking his head again to wipe off his face. He breathed out as he looked up again. "A, a lot...Collette. A lot of things...But you helped me out. I was the, uh." The word? He'd heard it a lot as the word itself, but never said it before then. Now, he was still trying to get it to sound right on his tongue. "The, the lion? The animal..."

His confession startled further laughter out of her, turning into hiccups temporarily. "Simba? That was you?" It made so much more sense hearing the lion who had been spending time in the apartments and stalking the new arrivals last month was Martin. Only -- "How? How'd you end up as a lion like that?"

Another pause as her face reddens, difficult to tell at first. Darker skintones help make it less readily apparent. "Oh gosh, I hope you didn't mind when I was combing your mane! Or scratching your ears, I know that can be so weird if you don't want someone doing it, and they don't get when you're saying no --"

Oh goodness, she hopes she hadn't been terribly rude!

Well, he's not safe from looking red, but he was barely aware. It was scary, in a way – thrilling, maybe? – in revealing such a thing. Thank goodness she laughed! It made it safer for him to.

"Huh–?" Too many things at once, all stirred into laughter. "Oh, no! No, it's...don't worry. I was happy! You were nice." He dipped his head, grinning, thinking about it. "I was just happy for that!"

"I'm sorry I didn't know -- that I didn't figure that out, I just thought..." She laughs again, shaking her head. "I don't know what I thought. Someone had brought a lion in? Or turned into one, but I never imagined it was you!"

All of that is detail that fills in blanks of time past. More important than any of it was him being here now, okay, whole and hale and healthy and safe. Koltira had to be ecstatic, much as the undead elf ever was; and so many of the rest of Martin's friends.

"Have you found everyone yet? Do you remember everyone? I mean, being able to say you're okay, that you're here, I know so many of us were worrying --"

His smile grew a shade self-conscious, embarrassed as she went on. Still hanging onto that hand of hers, his arm slacks a little, dipping down as his forearm rested on her armrest. He has to settle for a little bit and think on her questions and sort through the ones that needed answers and what ones could simply be smiled along with. One thing at a time! There's already too much!

"I'm...I'm still looking," he said, sounding overwhelmed (he was). "There's a lot...lot of people. Mmh. And things to do. To account for."

That he sounded overwhelmed finally penetrated her awareness. Collette slowed down, giving his hand a squeeze, breathing in and offering a smile as she breathed back out through her nose. "There is a lot, huh?" People, things, time misplaced, and opportunities rediscovered.

Maybe that last thought is why she said what she said next.

"I'm sorry we couldn't do more for Regina. But she was free, at the end. We all made sure of that much. I told her --" Collette looked away. She forced herself to look back to Martin. "I told her you were loved here, and that she wasn't alone, and you weren't, either."

Her eyes teared up for very different reasons then.

His face contorted, fighting a losing battle with a massive swell of grief, hearing that. The smile twisted into a grimace and his head bowed, forehead hitting the armrest with a dull little sound. There was a weak, unhappy noise that broke up his attempt to gulp it all back down to no avail.

Her face showed some of her dispair, not sure what to do, and not sure how to say she was so sorry for what they'd been unable to do. "I'm sorry," wasn't enough.

Her free hand came over the awkwardness of the crate in her lap, stroking his hair. She'd pull him into another hug, but the dratted crate was preventing her from having a proper lap. It was one of the most ludicrous blocks she'd dealt with lately, let alone when trying to give some portion of comfort to someone important to her.

She couldn't imagine what it'd feel like to lose Phillip, not like this, and not to something like the parasite that had controlled her body. It's that, and not the thoughts and fears and screaming memories of her own skinning, the fever dreams of being sick through June, that comes to mind. She wouldn't be able to let the horrible things that were so personal come out to play. They had no place here.

Martin had to let a lot of that out, and he had little strength to fight himself and hold it any longer. Collette would just have to endure, then, some boy who's probably a little too old to be crying like that for a little while. It would work itself out eventually, leaving him a little weaker and quieter, face finding itself buried in the crook of his arm, slumped out of the energetic crouch he'd been in before and sat heavily on the floor.

While he was turning his head to wipe his eyes on his sleeve, some of his hair wound up tickling the inside of his ear for how it shifted while Collette's hand was there.

He looked up, blinking his vision back into focus, swallowing. He wasn't miserable by much of a stretch, or even too terribly sad anymore...his expression was muted, himself consoled enough by having cried it out.

"I'm sorry," he said, blinking again. His eyes still managed to sting. "You're still sitting here, and I'm..."

"Letting it out," she finished, regardless of what words he might have chosen to fill in his blanks. She ruffled his hair once more, pulling her hand back, but not before giving a light chuck to his chin.

Collette smiled, her arm coming back up to rest on the crate proper. "It's fine. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who has to cry to let it all out, sometimes." She was never going to tell people they couldn't cry. She might be of a mind to tell them to hold off until later, but that depended on the crisis moment they were otherwise located in.

He smiled back, small and meek to start, but impossible not to reflect what Collette herself was casting toward him. He'd known her to be clever and thoughtful before, but the extent of her kindness was something still to be discovered. Knowing that she could be so, and that she'd cried to simply see him back...It made him happy. Grateful.

"I'm still...full," he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "Mmh. I mean, I'm...very happy. I'm very happy to see you again, and a lot of people. And I'm sad, too...for a lot of things. It's at the same time. And they're both in here," his hand went to his chest. "And they're very big...bigger than me. And I think I'm happy about that, too."

He squinted at her, starting to question. Was that strange? Feeling that way...He was still so close to the glow of those other facets of himself, shrouded though they were; he knew he was different in that way. So was it that? Or...

She followed along best as she could. Collette thought she had the gist, if the particulars of his explanation were his alone. Her eventual nod was understanding. "I think feelings can be that way," regardless of if it were a feeling or something else. "You can be happy and sad all at once, and it can feel bigger than you are! It probably is, especialyl if you feel all... I don't know, like you're one with the universe or soemthing."

For her, it felt like such an odd thing to say, her own cheeks turned a darker shade. "Getting a crash course in how to be yourself over the last year has been crazy, huh?"

There she went, still so much smarter than he was, he was sure of it. One with the universe made him squint, but Martin smiled small, nodding anyway.

"Yes," he agreed. "Trying to understand...me is. Crazy, yes."

Collette grinned, reaching out to ruffle his hair once more and ignoring the press of her laundry container against her stomach. "Now you sound like a proper teenager!" she joked. Trying to understand themselves sure does feel like an exercise in crazy a good deal of the time.

"I'm glad you're back, Martin. As your two-legged self. Not that I didn't like meeting the Lion inside of you, but I like two way conversations, or at least the option!"

found you [OPEN]

October 5th

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

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)