066 x 660 // video/action // Friday

[dignity_misery]

[ It isn't the first time she's appeared on the network bloody, but never quite so much before. Her clothing is soaked, it is beginning to go tacky in her hair. It is smeared all across her face. Carla Morir has looked crazed on the network before as well, but never quite like this either. The pupils in her brown eyes are blown, huge and black and thoughtless. She's breathing heavily, blood hissing wetly from her teeth and lips with the force of it, her chest heaving.

She has something clutched in her hands, indefinable but bloody and wet like the rest of this scene. She stares down at the camera on the ground for a long, furious, moment and then as if something breaks, she drops down to her knees screaming and begins to smash the device with a fist; which rends without care against concrete and broken plastic.

As the device loses functionality, her screaming crackles electronically and breaks and then is finally gone. ]



[[ooc; she ate her not!boyfriend, she be cray. I figure she's going to flip her shit for a bit and then pass the fuck out. If you want to catch up with her at the 'family' estate you're welcome to do that. Or deal with her cray first hand. Whatever makes it float.

Forward dated a bit because I don't tend to tag a lot on weekends and know I'm going out Friday night.]]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ An in-between. Hei won't say it, but he knows what that's like. In thoughtful moments -- of which there are several -- it makes the world grow too blurry. Makes him feel like he's caught in a maw staled by time, reeking of the awful things that exist to be caught between life's teeth. It's a strange place -- one of exile, sometimes of bitterness, other times regret, but ultimately of loneliness. Not human, but not Contractor, either. However, it isn't Hei's primary focus. Belonging, in any sense, is no longer familiar to him. In many ways, it is no longer possible. ]

[ It's smarter to merge the best of both worlds with the worst. Stay centered. That keeps you alive. Self-indulgent vacillation does not. ]

[ Right now, Huang would refer to what Hei's doing as Damage Control. In spite of Carla's escalating levels of violence -- the dark eyes blazing with fury and her movements an eruption of brute force that edges on lunacy -- he stays largely tolerant. A predator's tolerance that draws blood, leaves bruises, but maybe isn't all that different from the Reanimate variety. He waits until she's buffeted herself into exhaustion by her own ferocity. Playing his waiting game, his eyes suggesting that he's just turned himself off to wait for the moment when he'll have to engage in the universe again. ]

[ When she stumbles, he studies the unspectacular smear of blood, lightly garnished with grit, glistening on the concrete. Red in the dips of Carla's knuckles, red on her hair and skin. The sound of her labored breathing is like a signal, tugging hooks into his reflexes. Now. It takes him seconds to reach her. A bright tendril of electricity whips from his palm, lighting everything with a tungsten clarity. Not a lethal voltage. But Carla will feel her heart hammer erratically, her elbows locking and her skin going clammy. The paralysis will leave her body heavy, and somehow amorphous, as if she has more than one trunk and four limbs, as if she's something else altogether, a jellyfish quivering in the sand. ]

[dignity_misery]

[She makes a garbled noise as the shock hits her, eyes rolling back for a moment, and she goes still, eyes blank and mouth open. It is a very strange sensation, it reminds her of when Isaac had injected her in the neck and dragged her back to Barbet to die.]

[Being taken up by the memory keeps her silent and distracted, not that she was going anywhere in the first place.]

[It had been cold, snowing. She remembers the shape of her footprints in the snow. She remembers how quickly Isaac had come out of the shadows, furious and powerful. A pinch to the neck, going down in the concrete, being wrapped up and dragged at a breakneck pace.]

[Isaac's little poison hadn't lasted very long, by the time he dumped her onto the floor of the warehouse she had been getting her bearings, starting to move and beginning to mock him. He'd hurt her until she was too dizzy to stand, but her mocking never stopped.]

[Even with Barbet in the doorway and the gun on her forehead: Do it. Do it. Do it.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Do it. ]

[ The thought -- factual, emotionless -- flits through his mind. He could do it. A stronger voltage. A set of fingertips to a nerve-cluster. A palm-heel strike to the throat. Easy as easy, and mess-free. No sensible person can hope to save this creature Carla is, this half-crushed, half-crazed demon of pure instinct. It's cleaner to put her down. ]

[ But it isn't Hei's prerogative to judge or damn. Carla's not a target; he'll receive no compensation for his troubles. All he feels is a vague and distant revulsion for her -- with all the wretchedness which constitutes humanity, and with himself, both for getting involved and, conversely, for thinking it petty and mildly disgusting when surely one should try to find these things poignant -- for one's sanity, if not one's morality. (Has he lost both? Maybe.) The City holds nothing for him. No profound puzzles, merely fear and force. It's a collection of strange and isolated people bound together and balanced by fears which pull them in opposing directions. ]

[ What a waste. ]

[ He approaches Carla, the focus slipping away from his gaze, and leaving him looking strange, tired, older. Just as fast, it settles into a calm neutrality. Kneeling, he reaches down and brushes the hair off her red-smudged face. Strands of it are caught in the drying streaks of blood; he picks them away with a precise, almost scientific delicacy. But it's not to soothe her. It's to examine her closer, to check for an erratic pulse or uneven pupils. Satisfied, he scoops her up, then rises -- one arm encircling her shoulders, the other under her dangling legs. He could take her to a hospital, but he's in no mood to answer questions or fill out paperwork. ]

[ Better to deposit her at her home. ]