things like this never end well

[theguideless]

Date & Time: 8/27-8, dead o' night
Location: somewhere within a fair jog of the Hold
Characters: Vanille, Martin
Summary: Sunshine girl has no business with this dark and awful child
Warnings: Body horror and 80% chance of violence


[where's this again? where's he going? for what?

he doesn't know. he doesn't remember leaving...wherever it was he left from. hungry, maybe? his stomach feels like an empty pit. buzzing head. cold and sweating – so uncomfortable. there's no more teeth for his tongue to bump against – just rotten gums to run across, detecting hints of...something underneath.

it makes him nervous again. he stops, ducking his head down and staring at the sharp shadow the nearest streetlamp makes of him. big and hunched – it looks like a blob on the concrete. probably (definitely) better than what he really looks like.

he squints about the area, growing frightened. what is he doing out here...?]

Comments

oh goddamnit that was embarrassing

[smiled]

[It's not uncommon for Vanille to be up late with worry. She'd slept restlessly since coming to the Hold, concern for her friends who had not yet arrived plaguing her dreams until she woke in cold sweats, in tears with the missing of them. It was supposed to be different now. They'd saved the world, she and Fang, had made peace with that decision and left the vast wilds of Gran Pulse for their new family to discover. They had given humanity a new world, free from the tyranny of the fal'Cie, a world to build up with their own hands, with the relentless determination they'd found hidden in their hearts.

She and Fang had gone into that crystal sleep with no regrets, content in the knowledge that they had atoned for what destruction they had wrought those hundreds of years before. That should have been the end of it, but she is here, alive and moving again, and though she has shed the worry of the centuries before, she has gained the worries of centuries more.

Much of her little family has arrived since she first found herself once again alone in an unfamiliar world, but her thoughts stray to the two who aren't here every time she closes her eyes. It is easier, less painful, with Fang here, but she misses the others, misses Snow's boisterous, optimistic nature and his absolute belief in the rightness of what he does... and Sazh. She misses him most of all. After all she had put him through, he had forgiven her, had in the end taken hold of the guilt she felt and placed it on his own shoulders. He was like the father she had lost so long ago, and it is thoughts of him that lead her to wriggle out of Fang's sleeping embrace, to tiptoe out of the apartment for a walk in the night to clear her head.

She is some distance from the Hold when her melancholy thoughts are interrupted by a sound off to her right. More curious than afraid, Vanille wanders over toward the humanoid shape huddled there, under a streetlamp.]

Hello? [Her voice is light, pleasant, and vaguely concerned.] Are you all right?

VANILLE USED VINE WHIP...?

[theguideless]

[for a minute, he's deaf to the call, hugging his arms tight and staring numbly at the ground, all wrapped up in himself.

the echo, the nagging notion something was said, the feeling of something drawing near...Martin startles badly, head whipping around back and forth until finding the girl approaching. his stomach does a flip – dread. his hands slip up and clutch at his sleeves, hugging tighter.]

I...I, I–[a shudder.] N-no'm, I'm– [he shakes his head.] Nothing!