057 x 750 // action // Siren Song (25th)

[dignity_misery]

[[ooc; I split up 24th/25th because this set contains triggering subject matter of suicide/self-harm.]]

[The singing has changed since the day before, tempting voices echoing all throughout the City. Hers is still low in its pitch, but her sonorousness has finally found its melody, and her coaxing reaches out to you:]

BODIES -- ROOFTOP

Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor

[ Kill kill kill. ]

WHAT THE WATER GAVE ME -- BEACH

'Cause she's a cruel mistress
And a bargain must be made
But oh, my love, don't forget me
When I let the water take me

So, lay me down
Let the only sound
Be the over flow
Pockets full of stones

Lay me down
Let the only sound
Be the overflow

[ Now let the water take you. ]

Comments

Beach

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's taken precautions for this curse. His ears are sealed with plugfones, wired to a small ipod that plays pink-noise -- binaural beats at 30 Hz. On the beach, perched on a rickety bench, he's peeling a mango and watching the sky darken, which it does seamlessly, almost between one bite of fruit and the next. The white curve of sand seems to glitter. This isn't a place to be morose or brooding in. If anything, Hei's mood is more equilibrated than it's been in months. Yet, as the mango juice drips down his chin, as he sucks it from his fingers, his earplugs loosen. ]

[ The song seeps through like water, and a sudden, strange heaviness creeps into him. After being contained behind steel-traps and padlocked doors so long, it's as if all the misery he's ever experienced is pouring forth, just as messy as the mango. ]

[ His eyes have a peculiar absence to them -- two dark ciphers -- as he rises from his seat. One step, two, then he's drifting toward the water. ]

[dignity_misery]

[ The siren smiles to itself. Carla was an easy target for this curse, eager to exert control over others, and so very eager to lure others to their destruction. She recognizes Hei, distantly, buried somewhere far beneath the euphoria of this moment of power. The recognition does not see her falter, merely continues to tempt and call, ]

Take what the water gave me.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei can count on one hand the number of times he's sunk into despair. An absolute inertia, where you suffer so much you'd be relieved to either die, or else kill. Either will suffice -- as long as it results in an ultimate disconnection. But each time, he's swung himself away from that edge. Not with a dazzling burst of willpower, but with a whispered suggestion: You know this exit isn't meant for you. ]

[ This isn't like that. He can hear only the waves, and the chilling pitch of the siren's song. Below that, faintly is an inner-voice, warning: Stop But as seconds creep on, it is distorted, unrecognizable, until he can scarcely recall it. Slowly, he walks along surf's lacy edge, wind-swept and blank-eyed. His wet boots slosh through the waves, sand sucking at the soles. Five feet, ten, fifteen, and he's upto his hips in the water. ]

[ Dreamily, he imagines his body swallowed by the seafoam. Imagines the irresistible consequence of walking just a few feet further. ]

[ Stop. ]

[dignity_misery]

[ Stop is not an option here, not in her mind. Her song, full of sacrifice and unhappiness, echoes more loudly from where she watches him in the darkness. It pushes at him with a petulance. Go. Go deeper.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Sacrifice and unhappiness have never been in short supply in Hei's life. But his mind doesn't consciously register them as such. That's not his scene. Self-pity can't manifest for someone who keeps his eyes on the straight and narrow. When the siren lulls him to go deeper, he resists. But only for a moment. Waves lap at his chest as he lurches forward. He sinks deeper into the water, watching the horizon with unblinking, apathetic eyes. Measuring time by the ebb and flow of salty tide, and his choices, by the dead silence of land. ]

[ Maybe this is his penance, the consequence of so much blood on his hands. ]

[ Stop. The word strobes deafeningly through his head. He's chin-deep in water. But suddenly his feet refuse to go forward. His whole body rebels against the sound of the song, the petulance in its pitch. Get out. The thought floats up on a bubble of self-assertion, bursting to wash him in ... ]

[ Clarity. ]

[ The vagueness slips from his eyes. All at once he's cataloguing his surroundings. The roar of the waves. The source of the song. The familiarity of its tone. Certain actions take precedence. Get out of the water. Find the cursed singer. Silence them -- with either fists or electrocution or strangulation. Because if this City thinks he'll drift so willingly to his death -- well, it doesn't know him. ]

[dignity_misery]

[She's not far, her own body wet from the ocean, dark hair heavy. She's watching him crawl back up out of the sea furious, the song still murmuring in her chest.]

Go. Go back.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's been in the game too long not to spot her fast. ]

[ Swayed by the tide, he regards her with blank eyes -- almost like he's staring through her, not at her. Like he's still possessed by the song. She murmurs, Go. Go back. And all at once, he dives, into the heart of an oncoming wave. The sunset makes a path on the water, butterscotch yellows and fuschia pinks. For a long minute it goes unbroken. Then Hei's head crests the shimmering surface -- barely a few feet away from Carla. Wiping the streaming hair back from his face, he wades ashore -- a shark's fin cutting through water. His clothes are plastered to his body; the wet boots make each step feel like moving through glue or a viscous syrup. But he doesn't seem concerned. ]

[ His focus is on Carla. And the rage buzzing like a live wire underneath his skin. ]

Drowning people to death? [ Flat, but with varying degrees of menace shuttering across his face. ] Maybe I'll do that to you.

[ The fact that she's cursed doesn't even stop him. She's a threat. That's all that matters. ]

[dignity_misery]

[She sneers at him, imperious in front of him. It's not that the stance is unnatural to Carla, merely unnatural in her interactions with Hei. She liked Hei, maybe because he had no emotions for her, which was something that soothed her, the same way Saya had soothed her when she first arrived in the City. She never pestered Saya in the same way, however. The woman terrified her, but Hei was something to poke and prod and agitate. Sometimes someone to sit silently and feel empty with.]

[That doesn't matter right now. The song wants him to go and drown like she told him to.]

You'll drown yourself.

[She wouldn't lay a finger.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's easy for Hei to feel no emotion for her -- or for most others. Empty is a default state of being: he has to start off each day by wrenching his attitude back into the right groove: People have consequence. It's still easier to see them as a collection of veins to slit and weak points to exploit. And Carla reminds him too much of the human flotsam floating in the Syndicate's slipstream -- a dreg that inspires little but contempt and ennui under a thin surface curiosity. Hei isn't interested in concepts like Purity and Filth; he's interested in survival, in retaining a core sense of self no matter what scum you're mired in. Looking at Carla is like looking at a sick beast thrashing in a net, biting and clawing anything and everyone -- including itself. ]

[ Hei has no use for sick things. It's better -- smarter -- to put them down. ]

Not for you.

[ He tips his chin, his gaze steady. A handspan of silence passes before he strikes out, lightning fast, a knife-hand blow to the side of her neck. But it's not designed to knock her flat. There's a charge where his skin connects hers -- a charge that feeds muscle convulsions, locked joints, and the inexplicable taste of copper in the mouth. ]

[ Powering her body off like a switch. ]