All Night, Me And My Wretched Device

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Who: Nova Pastos, Lil Cal, the Abyss, and-- (you!)
What: Catch-all for Nova Pastos' time in the Abyss
When: 7/31 and on until they're saved
Where: The. Uh. The Abyss.
Warnings: Suicidal ideation, derealisation and depersonalisation, break with reality, child neglect, more to be added as things are written



Like failure itself, the Abyss knocks the wind from him.

Not physically, and not like a punch, but mentally and like the hard, bone-shattering impact with the water's surface tension. It cracks across his psyche just like that, splintering across the sheer plane of his mind. It wants him to break first, of that he's sure, but he doesn't.

The pain, however, wraps around his brain the same way his body was engulfed by ocean--in that dream.

But this is not the Abyss of his ocean. In some ways, it's similar. Endless, with an infinite depth and a vastness of existence that renders any single living object irrelevant. But it still has solid ground, and gravity, and air to breathe. The terrain varies from lifeless sand to gritty soil, peppered with inert rock. It's like the earthy quasi-beach before one reaches the ocean shore, but without ever seeing the sea at all.

There is no ocean.

The dark sky yawns hollow above him, void of sun or moon or stars.

This is also reminiscent of the ocean, but without the pressure, the movement, or the power. It's thin and strange and empty. There is an absence, a death of substance, that he feels every time he breathes in, filling his lungs with nothing and leaving him aching for purchase, for presence, for reality--for any sense of realness at all. It is as though reality itself has disincorporated him, and it...

It is horribly familiar.

It feels like home. Like his penthouse suite, its rooftop 168 metres in the air, a perfectly isolated habitat soaring above the Chalra skyline and filled with a restless accumulation of stuff. Computers, horse statues, movie posters, horse prints, puppets, furniture, weaponry, mechanical dreams, workout equipment.

But it never felt any less empty.

Now, in this uncanny echo of that infinity of loneliness, that lonely infinitude--the reality he holds in his mind gives way to the tangible waste of his existence. It seeps into him through the cracks of his broken heart--the soup can, rent asunder into mere atoms, compressed and devoured by the sea. A discaded husk whose failure was inevitable. And that was okay. It was always meant to be.

But not like this. Not like this. There is nowhere for him to go, nothing for his essential nature to become.

This is not his ocean.

There is no ocean.

This is just stone, and grit, and Nova Pastos, and Lil Cal.

And--

Comments

[avemortis]

Contra's outburst doesn't exactly improve Mortis's mood, either. It doesn't threaten to undo everything that's happened — she's already accepted that Contra and Pastos must come together — but it definitely doesn't make her more cooperative. She turns resolutely away from the proffered puppet hand with a glare.

"No! I'm not holding hands with him." She holds her hand out to Pastos with a stubborn little pout. "I want to hold hands with you!"

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Dirk barely has time to react to Cal before Mortis does, and by then it's too late--not that it would have been enough time even if he'd been faster. But it's one more thing he comes up short on, and by extension cuts his patience even shorter.

"Oh, come on." He says it quietly. Not quietly enough to be inaudible. And it's not clear which of the two he's talking to--both of them, neither of them, one or the other, take your pick.

The tone is pretty clear, though.

"This isn't the time to get precious. I can't do your job because you've suddenly decided to independently invent the idea of cooties," he snaps at Cal. Then, turning to Mortis, he hits a slightly kinder--but no less hard--line.

"This isn't negotiable." There is a pause, however--unlike Cal, Mortis doesn't have the explanations. Her desire to hold his hand is... not unreasonable, he realises that. Considering the way Cal has been. And it is, on some level, gratifying to Dirk. The fact that she wants his hand, to hang onto him and feel... safer that way, as opposed to Cal. Even if it's because Cal is being a total shitheel. He's protecting her, and she wants him to be her protector.

But he needs her to do what he says. Even if that means... explaining himself. At least enough to get her on board.

"I need both of my hands free. All right? I need them to. Uh. To hold my sword. And that kind of thing. So just do what I say and hang onto Cal."

From his back, Cal stares at her. His arm sways a little from the movement that dropped it to Dirk's side in the first place.

His face is, as ever, unchanging.

[avemortis]

Mortis purses her lips, cheeks puffed out as she regards Dirk like she's mulling over an offer. Then she turns that surly look on Contra. It's really a measure of the urgency of the situation that she doesn't press the issue.

"Okay, fine!" Mortis takes hold of Cal's hand with a definite air of resentment, but she is resolute. "But if he says another word about Melly, he's going to have to say sorry."

Odd how she makes it sound more like he's going to be sorry. She whirls back around to look at Pastos, impatience starting to get the better of her.

"Now can we go?"

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"UGH. GROSS. FINE." Cal does as he's bid, which is to say, he doesn't do what he's been told not to do, and isn't that basically the same thing?

Truthfully, Dirk expected more resistance. But he desperately, desperately did not want that resistance, and so when Mortis and Cal concedes without any kind of actual fight, he actually slips up enough to let out a heavy lungful of breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

"You got it," he affirms, and even flashes Mortis a right-handed thumbs-up, readying his sword in his dominant hand. Her threat to Cal hardly registered, and falls below the threshold of acknowledgement--and it would have even if he wasn't desperately trying to get her to cooperate with his plans. He doesn't think Mortis is actually capable of hurting Cal--not in any way that matters.

As for Cal himself? His arm hangs just as limply and unanimatedly as it always has. Dirk appreciates that.

"Don't worry. If we get separated, Contra will protect you."

[avemortis]

It's clear by Mortis's expression that, despite understanding the nature of Contra and Pastos's relationship, she doesn't have supreme confidence in that. Still, she keeps hold of Cal's hand.

"We won't get separated," she insists, more like a child willing a belief into truth than anything else. She frowns up at Pastos. "Do you have a plan?"

A plan besides "simply enter the cave and follow the sound of Melly's voice", that is. The longer they delay their entry, the more restless she seems to get.

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Of course the one time someone asks him for a plan is the time he doesn't have one. This would be mildly frustrating under normal circumstances; right now it makes him want to peel the skin of his face right off.

That is obviously not what he does, and it sure as fuck isn't what he says, but the feeling is there--exacerbated by the fact that he had to fight so fucking hard to get her to do even one simple thing, and then she asks him for his input?

"I'm here to help you, not do it for you," is what he says out loud. And in saying it, he feels certain it's the right thing to do anyway. She's a Nova Knight. Melly is her partner and her weapon both. What good would it do for him to orchestrate the entire rescue for her? What would she gain from that? Sure, Melly would be back in her hands, but this isn't just about that... is it? Would taking control of this whole situatioon and doing it for her actually be helping her, or would it simply be selfishness?

He knows the answer to that one, and so he bites back the urge to tell her exactly what to do, and instead steps back--not literally, but mentally. Emotionally.

Not too far back, though. She's counting on him. And he cannot, will not, let her down.

"But we'll protect you every step of the way."

[avemortis]

Now Mortis looks like she's getting annoyed, more frustration than upset. She really did think he'd stopped her with some kind of plan in mind. But this suits her just fine. She clenches her teeth for a moment.

"Okay, then we're going! Now." With an iron grip on Contra's hand, she marches ahead of Pastos without looking back, trusting he'll keep up. As far as she's concerned, they've already wasted enough time.

The inside of the cave is an oppressive sort of dark, but not pitch black. There seems to be some vague source of dim light here and there, perhaps pockets of phosphorescence in the stone casting a sickly glow. Like all things in the Abyss, it's hard to really tell. 

Mortis walks with absolute purpose, and at a pretty good clip for those little legs. She's clearly following some trail Pastos can't see; her steps don't falter, and she seems sure of her destination. After a point, she seems to hardly pay Pastos and Contra any mind at all, aside from holding onto Contra's hand.

"Melly... Melly, I can hear you! Don't worry, I promise I'm coming for you!"

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It takes some real effort on Dirk's part to bite back his impatience with her impatience. What makes it worse is that he shares a bit of her impatience with him. He should have a plan. He should have spent the time they were walking productively, should have been thinking ahead and preparing himself for solutions.

Yes, he's tired. He's agitated. He's anxious--about Mortis, about himself, about who he is to her and how to be that version of himself, the person he wanted....

That he wanted to be all along.

The person he was supposed to be, who he's spent all these years trying to forge himself into. It's been so hard to wrap his brain around the emotion of wanting so badly, and then to follow it with maybe, possibly, actually having, actually being.

And that led to him wasting time trying to be that while doing absolutely fucking nothing to earn it.

Absolutely pathetic, desperate, idiot behaviour, and she's right to be pissed off when she expected more.

But that's all the more reason to make this her mission, not his. He can prove to her (and to himself, he doesn't say--not even in his own head) that he can be a good guardian, a good protector, a true and caring friend--not by doing the thinking for her, but by doing the opposite. By keeping her safe--or safe enough, by being her eyes and ears and blade while she finds and reclaims what's hers. That's the real work, he thinks. And he knows it to be true. She'll thank him later. He's sure of that. So he bites it back, holds it in, solidifies his resolve to make sure he doesn't stand in the way of her earned growth--

And follows.

He focuses on matching her pace at first, noticing that it's no longer the slow and meandering amble of a lost little girl but the swift and purposeful stride of a Knight on a mission. It doesn't take very long for him to get the rhythm, though, and by then they're inside the cave. Just in time, his nervous system can set such mundanities to an automatic process. Now his eyes and ears and thoughts turn outward, listening to every echo, clocking every trace of change in the dim, gloaming lack-of-light as they traverse the Abyssal gullet. His grip on the hilt of his katana tightens.

[avemortis]

It's for the best for both of them, that Pastos lets her take the lead on this. It is her mission, not his, and the only thing that seems to quell her anxiety is moving forward. So she does, relentlessly, deeper into the cave, apparently not worried about how they'll get back out or anything beyond reclaiming Melly, really. Once they're reunited, all other problems become trivial.

They come to some kind of junction in the cave, too dark to see ahead. Mortis stops, rocking back on her heels. Then her eyes widen and she turns, and with little warning and an almost joyous breath, she takes down one side of the junction. Curiously enough, despite Pastos's carefully honed reflexes, she just manages to slip free of his grasp.

She doesn't even run that far: it's not long before she finally finds Melly tucked away in a little recess away from the rock wall, illuminated only by faint motes of light. With a soft cry, she drops to her knees and scoops the doll up in her arms, tears already welling up in her eyes.

"Melly!" There's so much relief, so much joy, so much love in her voice, even as it trembles with tears. "I'm so sorry...I never meant to leave you alone. You're safe now. I'm here now..."

Strange that she should be so protective of the doll when the doll is, technically, her weapon. But right now, Mortis has shed the air of a scared young girl, instead cloaking herself in the stewardship of a personal protector, a loyal Knight.

Mortis hugs the doll tight until she stops, pulling back with a look of surprise. "Huh? Melly, what's wrong?" Her brow furrows, and she looks around. Something's wrong. "What are you...?"

Then, in a flash, her eyes widen and she clutches Melly close, throwing one hand out.

"Pastos, wait! Don't come any cl— "

There is no warning sign, no overture of danger. Before she can finish getting the words out, tendrils of darkness emerge from the inner surfaces of the cave and engulf Mortis and Melly completely.