exsiliumlogs | slip of the tongue

Entry tags:

slip of the tongue

Date & Time: 2/28 dayish
Location: miles north of the hold and such
Characters: Bariyan and Marty
Summary: PATERNAL INSTINCTS?? PLAIN OL' GUILT? whatever it is it's making this dead dude sniff out this kiddo
Warnings: Fightytimes and scarytimes

The tempering stones sparked uselessly for their second appearance in a row, but Martin had less time to reflect and be disappointed than before. No time, actually, not with those...things hot on his tail. Whatever they were, monster or not, they were strong. Not the sort of thing Martin would suspect any of his cousins to take on their own...hardly the sort he'd stand up to alone, either. That was for sure.

I said I'd come and kill them all, he thought despairingly, ducking behind another sickly, thick-bodied tree and dropping to a crouch, head down and panting. If I can't kill even one, then...Then what good was he, really? Maybe that'd be proof enough he was really not cut out for...for whatever it was this place wanted him for. Maybe this is all a big test.

The further away from the crumbled and ruined cities Martin ran, the fewer encounters he had. All the better. He ought to conserve his energy for returning straight to the Hold, where Martin (big Martin), Bariyan, Eliot, Nik and all the others were. Keeping the scourge burning in the palm of his hand from getting out of control was important – the blacker it got, the less he could conjure. So if I don't have to conjure anything for another three hours...

After waiting for the sound of...of anything and hearing little and less, Martin slid to sit at the roots, letting himself catch his breath. He winced before he could sit all the way, having to sit up and pull the netbook out of the back of his pants (a satchel would really have helped...) before plopping on the ground.

He took a few steadying breaths. Skirting away from the towns and broken cities, yes...He could do that. Veer a little, but always have eyes for the south. He might be a little late, but...but it was better than being a lot dead.

I have to at least try...

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"Really?" Bariyan suddenly turned to stare at Martin, as the car rolled on. "Seems like you could... let's say, pass as human, easily. And live and do whatever it is humans do in your world."

Not to say that Martin would want to, necessarily, but Bariyan liked talking hypotheticals. It took his mind off reality.

Martin gave him a look, as though he'd suddenly sprouted a second head with purple polka dots.

"No, I can't," he said, his breath shaking, as if he were supposed to laugh.

Bariyan took his foot off the pedal when he spotted a building up ahead. He left off the conversation for a moment to peer at it, but it didn't look like a gas station. Just some half-rotting farmhouse. He sped past in disappointment.

"Bet you could," Bariyan said, lightly. He wouldn't bet actual money on it, not with how little he actually knew about Martin and his background, but hey-- he'd been pretty certain that Martin was just as human as any of them. "Seems like they've brainwashed you good, though."

And that was a rather harsh accusation to make. Bariyan hardly noticed. He used to be far more careful with his words: he used to be known for his charm. No longer.

Martin's heart skipped a beat twice. Once as Bariyan's foot stepped on the gas, and once more at the remark. He didn't wholly understand it, but it didn't sound good.

"...What do you mean?" he asked slowly, uncertain.

Bariyan thought long and hard before answering.

"Have you ever known any other life? Other than killing monsters." Bariyan reached up to tug at a loose stitch. "Did anyone ever sit you down and ask, 'hey, is this what you want to do'?"

Martin's head turned, watching the road again. Really, it was amazing they hadn't hit something, he thought. But save for a few rattles or bumps now and then, he wasn't terrified anymore. But it was the weird way Bariyan was talking that bothered him more than the ride.

"When...I learned to conjure," he said, curling his fingers against the sides of the seat. "When I was nine, I think. Grandfather asked me what I wanted to do. Hunt or...track, or...work up north with the others. Northland monsters. It's different than where I live." He swallowed. "I wanted to stay where I was, so I picked."

Bariyan laughed. It was a short, unpleasant sound, made worse by the ruins of his throat. Hunt or track here, or hunt or track somewhere else. Right.

"That wasn't a choice," Bariyan said. "That was asking if you'd rather chop off your hand or your foot. You weren't ever given the option to leave, were you? Not just leave to go north. To leave, entirely."

The ragged laugh made Martin's skin crawl anew. Somehow, he preferred the horror of watching the road over the conversation at hand. The way Bariyan made it sound...He shook his head, trying to clear his head of the mood.

"But I," he protested weakly, unhappily. "I wouldn't want to leave them. They're...it's my family. We stick together."

No matter what.

He felt a lump in his throat. Except...except here.

Bariyan suddenly went silent at that. Things got tricky inside of his head, where family was concerned. Tricky, and unpleasant.

"And I guess it's family who tells you all about monsters?" Bariyan asked, once he'd sorted his own thoughts out. His tone was softer and less combative now. "Who says you have to fight them?"

He pauses. They're coming up to something in the road... fallen tree. Bariyan slows, and maneuvers around it. But his driving is jerky, and he overshoots it before he attempts the turn, forcing him to stall, back up and try again.

Any response had to wait until after the obstacle. Martin was biting his lip, breath held, giving an unhappy sound of alarm with the jerking, back and forth. It was a little nauseating, though the topic and hand was causing his stomach to churn more.

"We--" he grimaced, waiting for the ride to smooth out before even trying to talk again. "We're the...the only ones who can. Humans can't. So that's why..." Another bump. Oof. "We're around. We were made to."

Second try gets them around. Bariyan sits back and lets it go. The tree disappears into the distance.

"You were made." Bariyan said this like it left a bad taste in his mouth. "By what?"

If it was a god, Bariyan swore he was going to clock it in the face. Bariyan and gods of any sort didn't get along well.

"W-well--" Oh, dear. Martin felt like he was circling a drain, in a sense. I'm no good at anything like this. Why am I here and not...not Adrian or Dani? They're so much better at talking...

"I, I mean, I don't really know," he admitted weakly. "Nobody does. How Darkovs started. But...But I have a mother." He faltered, feeling that heavy, lonely pang again. "And...father." Used to. But he didn't want to talk about that at all. He tried to wrap it up, staring at the road ahead with big, desperate eyes.

"But Darkovs aren't. People. We're tools. Made to..." He exhaled, shaking. He clutched at the side of the seat with both hands, pushing himself up again. "To..." He squinted, looking out of his window. Darkness wasn't an issue for him.

Salvation. Maybe.

"I see buildings."

Bariyan remained silent, even after that last statement. It wasn't until he himself could see the buildings that he finally spoke up.

"You're not a tool." His voice was flat and cold.

He pulled off the road and shined the headlights towards the nearest structure. Looked like a store. The windows were gone and the inside was gutted. Behind it, a gas station. There were cars parked there but all the lights were off and there'd been no reaction to the sound of their truck coming up. Bariyan dimmed the lights again before pulling in.

He left the engine going, even after opening the door and cautiously stepping out to look around the station. Someone else had passed through long before them. Whoever they were, they'd located the main tanks and pried the lids off. Bariyan could see liquid down at the bottom of the tanks, but both looked like they'd been open a long while. He wasn't going to take that risk.

A little further away lay a length of hose pipe, with the siphon pump still attached. He wandered over, rolled the hose over with a foot, and stared down the road. Seemed like the last visitors had been in a hurry.

"Looks clear," Bariyan called back to Martin. He assumed it was clear, anyway. Since no one had come out and attacked them yet.

Bariyan's last remarks on the topic left a cold feeling in the pit of Martin's stomach. He doesn't understand, he thought. That's all. It's all different here. No one gets it.

When the truck came to a stop, Martin rolled on his side to peer out of his window, palms pressed into the seat cushion to prop him up without slipping around again. He didn't understand what he was looking at completely, other than something old and ruined. If anything was familiar, it was that sense of futility some places had. Abandoned ideas and wasted ambitions. Olvoski had a lot of that, be it ravaged farm towns lost to the droughts or the ashes of a home burned after parasites came. It was always sad to him; he hadn't seen enough outside the compound to really grow used to it like others did.

He was late to even seeing what Bariyan was trying to do, though watching from the start wasn't going to guarantee anything made sense, either. He startled at his call, hesitating before even starting to try to get out. The door was different on the inside than it was outside. He at least didn't spill out when the door opened – not entirely, anyway; his foot stuck between the electric shift stick and the seat.

Eventually, though, he was freed and slowly meandering around the building's perimeter. His legs felt shaky and boneless, and any faster than a step or two at a time made him dizzy and more tired than before. But the air was clearer without the stink of death so close. It was just the smell of the gasoline that he had to contest with at a turn.

He put a hand on the side of the building to steady while he looked around at all the vacant vehicles and the empty land around, plain as dull daylight in his eyes. It was alien and sad. He didn't like being lost out there any more than he liked being told no over and over whenever he said he just wanted to go home.

I don't want to stay here, he thought miserably, sliding down to the concrete and pulling his knees up to him.

Bariyan lingered a moment to watch Martin wander off. It was hard to resist the urge to call after him and tell him to stay within sight. But Martin had already shown himself to be fully capable of taking care of himself -- mostly -- and everything seemed quiet enough, anyway. Bariyan let him go.

He returned to the car first, to untwist the wires still stuck together. That killed the engine. With that done, bariyan went to check the tanks of the abandoned cars. But as he suspected, they were empty. Likely that previous visitors had siphoned them off before attacking the underground tanks.

Bariyan moved on to the inside of the gas station store. It'd been all but emptied out, either by humans or by nature. Nothing but debris and dust and useless miscellany. He picked through anyway, just in case, before giving it up for nothing and wandering out through the back door.

The turn of a corner brought him back to Martin. He stopped in his tracks. For a moment Bariyan felt almost human again; it'd been a long time since he'd felt anything even close to empathy.

"You all right, kid?" Bariyan spoke quietly, so as to not startle him.

The tingling in the back of his neck was alert enough for Martin; It's just him. Which was a whole other mess of questions and misgivings. From where the talk turned in the truck, Martin was starting to suspect he'd been wrong, where his first instinct had, as always (until now), been right. Maybe he's trying to say all those things so I'll stop being Darkov. Monsters would like one less hunter around.

Except he definitely could've just left him to those three...whatever-they-weres. And not come to fetch him at all. It was just...very confusing.

Martin opened his eyes and lifted his head when spoken to, blinking slow before looking over at...a dead man. More and more questions. But what to even say to the one at-hand? Nothing was right. He licked his lips and swallowed.

"I'm just tired," he said. And hungry. And thirsty. And lost. But the laundry list seemed more and more a burden as he thought on it; he was already causing enough problems. He shifted and started moving to his feet, the wall used for balance.

"Are we going now?"

Tired was fully understandable, so Bariyan took Martin's answer at face value.

"Yeah," Bariyan said, stepping past Martin and back towards the truck. "There's nothing here for us. Let's go."

Once at the car, he slipped back into the driver's seat and fiddled with the wires to start the engine up again. He supposed they'd just have to watch out for more cars on the side of the road, or another station. If they were lucky they'd find a map too.

He waited for Martin to climb back into the truck before taking them back onto the road. He only spared the rearview mirror a glance to make sure that nothing had emerged out of the shadows to follow them.

Martin was a great deal less animated in his discomfort with the truck the second time around – what he'd admitted was true, and he was too tired to flail about anymore. Aside from pinning himself as still as he could when the truck jerked and rattled into motion at the start, he was silent and withdrawn. He huddled himself up in the seat best he could without slipping and took to staring out of the passenger-side window as vacant countryside passed him by. All alien, littered here and there with the ruins of a civilization he couldn't imagine, even with the bit of time he spent at the Hold. Drinking in details wasn't something he had a knack for.

Hazy daylight made the inside of his eyelids red, obliging him to open them and recoil, ducking his head in his arm. Hours or days...he didn't remember falling asleep, but all the same. His stomach wasn't going to let him hide like that for long, either. A small bump in the road helped get his head back up, blinking blearily to find he was...still in the truck. It wasn't something he could dream away.

Stiffly, he uncurled, dragging fingers across the back of his neck and making a small waking sound.

"Where are we?" he mumbled, covering his eyes against the glare through the window.

Two answers came to mind immediately: bumfuck nowhere and hell if I know. Neither of them were good answers, so Bariyan settled for, "Some town. Looks like it's empty."

Bariyan rolled the truck to a halt in the town's gas station and killed the engine. Without so much as a word to Martin, he stepped out of the truck.

No cars in this station, and no sign of the underground tanks having been broken into yet. That was promising, but Bariyan's first order of business was to duck into the store. It looked to be in better shape than the last one, at least. There were still bottles of water standing on the shelves or on the floor. Plastic. Bariyan was suspicious of that. He instead made his way over to the back where the refrigerators stood.

The power had long since been cut, and most of the shelves were empty, but Bariyan picked up a bottle -- glass -- of carbonated water from one of the lower shelves, weighed it in his hand, and twisted the cap off. It fizzed, and seemed odorless. He assumed it was safe.

"Martin." Bariyan took the open bottle and went back for the boy -- he hadn't seen if Martin had left the car, though. "Here you go, kid."

For much of the time Bariyan was gone, Martin stayed huddled up against the daylight, wanting very much to sleep until he was back in Olvoski for good. It was really no use, however, and he wound up straightening up once more until joints cracked and muscles ached with the strain. He squinted out of the window at the new building – not too different from the one in the dark, he realized. Just...not as aged, perhaps. Details. He pushed open the door when Bariyan reappeared, letting his legs dangle off the side of the seat, fresh air billowing in to wake him up a bit more.

He stared at the bottle for a couple seconds before reaching out of impulse. Take things offered. He mumbled something unintelligible while drawing it back to himself – it was a What is it? lost in there. But it was very plainly water and that needed little and less explanation; he started gulping that stuff down without a second thought. The fizzing was alarming though, caused him to choke and cough, bending forward, spitting and sputtering in alarm.

"What--" he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, holding the bottle out and staring at it. He felt his face heating up, feeling foolish. "Oh, it just...tasted strange..."

But he said nothing of it, only taking a cautionary sniff of it before gulping more down. Don't cause any more problems.

"Not too strange, I hope," Bariyan said, arching an eyebrow. "Don't drink it if it makes you sick."

He ducked back into the building just a second to investigate again. This second sweep revealed two jerrycans sitting on the check-out counter. Bariyan picked them up and looked for damage -- there had to be some reason they were left behind -- but both seemed all right. He carried them back outside and fished the pipe and siphon out of the truck bed, from earlier.

He paused to look at Martin. "You coming along? I'm going to look around. Mostly for gas."

There was less than a third left when Bariyan reappeared, which meant whatever concerns Martin had about the drink came second to having something at all. He held the glass between his knees with both hands as his legs swayed now and then, toes curling and uncurling in his shoes. He leaned forward to watch Bariyan rummaging in the back of the truck – it was the first time he actually regarded something actually being back there.

He startled when eyes fell on him, blinking. For a moment he simply stared blankly, but soon fidgeted back into motion, sliding out of the truck and setting the bottle on the ground. He leaned against the side of the car for a moment, having straightened up too fast for his head to match pace, but recovered quickly enough.

"Yes, sir," he said, approaching and gradually looking more and more confused, even a little troubled. "Um. What's a gas?"

"It's the stuff this thing runs on," Bariyan said, patting the side of the truck. "If it runs out of gas, it stops moving. And we're going to be out soon."

That was optimistic. They were already just about out -- Bariyan didn't think they'd be able to clear the town if they kept going.

"Come on, then." Bariyan looked into the sun, frowned, and started to walk out of the station and towards the other side of the street.

"Oh."

Well, at least that made the truck less mysterious – it needed something to keep it moving. Martin nodded a little, staring blankly at the back tire until Bariyan began moving. That spurred him along, hopping into step behind him, the same spot as always. Once in place, he started looking about.

Martin didn't know much about the empty villages of Olvoski other than what others in the family told him – mostly that there were people once, but not anymore. Disease or famine or the monsters rushing in now and then...It wasn't uncommon. Still, he hadn't traveled to one before to see for himself. Whether he'd get the same feeling or not wasn't something he could say, but it wasn't a pleasant-feeling place to stroll about in.

The fact Bariyan reeked of...malignance didn't help make it any better, either. Martin wound up staring at him more than anything as they walked, and even moreso the stitching at the neck. It still made no sense to him at all, and he felt a dozen questions piling up, lacking conclusions to jump to.

"Sir?" The prompt left him before he had chance to check it. Immediately, he was afraid he was going to regret saying anything. "Um..."

The first car they came across was like a burnt-out wreck -- Bariyan doesn't a burned-out wreck, smashed in and hollowed out. Bariyan barely spared it a glance, except to wonder if it was the result of an attack or bad driving.

He'd just turned away from it when Martin's voice reached him. Bariyan stopped to look back at him, shrugging to keep the pipe from slipping off his shoulder, where he'd slung it.

"Uh-huh?"

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