new old pavements [open]

[theguideless]

Date & Time: 10/5 and beyond if need be
Location: Not far from the Hold
Characters: Martin, you
Summary: Looks like a lot of things need rebuilding or fresh construction (be it in prose or brackets or drawthings)
Warnings: I...I don't have to warn about 8 billion apologies anymore.............HOW...






With bare feet and over-sized clothes, Martin looked more like a refugee than a familiar transport. But then, things weren't particularly familiar anymore. In that, it was exciting...and frightening. Already the expectations he had were greatly sobered through mere days alive in Exsilium. Perhaps the timing of his rebirth was off. Things had tapered to a tense silence above ground, though by the itching feeling in his throat and lungs, things weren't utterly clean of the attacks. Rubble and broken places – even the places where transports called their tentative homes...It wasn't as disturbing to him as it perhaps ought to have been. But he had little to compare it to; life as a Darkov was sheltered and sparse, with community life restricted to family and a rigorous cause.

All in the past. Exsilium was now, for good or ill.

He hugged his arms and settled them on his knees, seated on..a piece of wall? Something that wasn't designed to be a seat, whatever it was. Probably a piece of wall. His mind wasn't on it.

Where to start?

...Start? Hadn't things already begun? Strange, the way his mind started tapering away from the things he knew were right. The human condition was at play, dropping heavy drapes over his clarity. Heavy was the best word for it all – uncertainty, grief, excitement, guilt, relief...it wasn't the miserable trudge of days long gone. This was a steady and certain hope, not the desperate clawing and groping of a boy ignorant of the world and himself. Even with fear crowding in, the flicker of truth within remained.

It was going to be alright. Even through the worst of things...

His body shuddered against both the chill in the air and the unknowns.

Comments

[ex_bandai157]

More surprises. He hadn't been expecting thanks from anyone, let alone Martin himself.

"You can if you want, but I didn't do very much in the end."

It'd be a little tasteless to say that he couldn't help getting involved if people were getting hurt or anything like that (and even so, it wasn't entirely true anyway.

[theguideless]

"It's...not so much about scale," Martin said slowly, following a stream of thought from a place within very slippery to grasp. The longer he remained bound in flesh and time, the harder it was to freely tap into it, that well of truths and awareness. Even in a span of hours he could find himself more taken by physical wants and needs than the clarity he had without them pressing down on him.

Another moment, and he seemed to lose that flicker and found himself in a strange spot of sorts. He glanced up, his gaze having drifted in the seconds trying to find the words.

"But...ah, ha...I'm sorry." He shook his head. "Is it strange to think like that? I guess I didn't think how it would seem to you."

[ex_bandai157]

His eyebrows rose a little at the first comment, and he watched Martin curiously for an explanation to that. Not so much about scale - then, the contribution at all? A sentiment like that wasn't so hard to understand, even if he'd likely ostensibly brush it off; he can understand it.

When no explanation came, however, he dropped that line of thought.

"It is strange," he said, opting for bluntness. "But how it seems doesn't matter if that's how you feel."

[theguideless]

Martin looked a little confused at that, feeling his stomach flip again. His fingers curled against his lap, feeling clammy, feeling...anxious, maybe? Fearful? Being face to face with someone he'd harmed – tried to harm more...How strange he'd been excited for the chance to make amends before putting it into practice.

The moment was brief; he smiled a small, relieved smile.

"Oh, well...Maybe. But I'm glad I got to meet you again. Like this, rather than...how it was before."

[ex_bandai157]

Before. A menace in the dark, a creature or NEXT or something that had practically ripped a car in half and left a man dead in its wake, caused a network buzzing with fresh accounts of blood spilt. A sickness, Koltira had said, leaving this child out of his own mind.

"They're much better circumstances." He pauses, and goes on neutrally, but not unkindly, "And you expect the ones from before won't happen again...?"

[theguideless]

Martin nodded, looking and sounding very certain of that. Almost pleased, even, given the smile's stretch across his face.

"They won't," he said, "because they can't. It's not in my blood or my bones anymore. I'm a human now, completely."

[ex_bandai157]

"A human?"

There wasn't any need to sound so taken aback, but there it was; regardless of how Martin had looked or acted at the time, Barnaby hadn't considered the possibility that he simply wasn't human.

"Then, before...?"

[theguideless]

"Before," Martin echoed, sucking in a slow, steadying breath. His hands opened, turned, palms opening.

"I was something terrible." They closed up again, fingers curling in. "Something very sad. I didn't know the truth of it – no one in my family did. Or does."

When he glanced back up, his mouth tugged a crooked, rueful smile. Time was tricky between worlds; for all the things long past for him, it could still be very much the present for all the people he left behind.

[ex_bandai157]

"I see."

He didn't, but it was a good enough answer to hearing something like that, he supposed. To inquire more would be prying and the information was irrelevant now anyway. He looked down for a moment as he took that in, before meeting Martin's gaze again.

"And returning was able to change that."

Returning from the dead, something he knew now to be more than possible but still unnerved him more than he'd like to admit.