poly_chromatic | 010 x 010 // video/action

Entry tags:

oc - carla morir

010 x 010 // video/action

[The video opens onto the red-gold desert evening, the device rolling over itself once or twice when it falls from its owner. The bulky frame and spiked headgear of a Tusken Raider and a woman are in conflict above. The raider gives an alien sounding squawk, and the woman hisses in reply, catlike and unrestrained, before jerking to the side and bringing her boot down into the creature's leg. Not human, but bipedal and it collapses with a shout. She grabs it by the collar of its cloak while it is still reeling. Her voice is a low murmur, barely audible. It's an intimate conversation, clearly.]

_{Do you see what I still have to take from you, motherfucker?}

[Her smile is sickle thin, eyes dark and heavy lidded.]

_{I can steal from you too.}

[She shoves the raider to the ground, dropping her knee sharply into its chest as she takes something from her back pocket. A razor she borrowed, and it gets pulled across the alien creature's throat when she rips back its hideous mask. It struggles underneath her, but the resistance grows steadily more feeble and groggy.

She stands then, giving the thing a kick to the head keep it down as she reaches over to take up the raider's dropped gaderffii. She heaves it up quickly, and it whistles in the air as she brings it down on the prone figure.

It continues to whistle for quite some time.]

Hah.

[Not a laugh, but a heavy breath of satisfaction. She touches her new weapon to the ground and leans against it, staring down contently at the glistening wet mess she's made.

The last thing she pauses to attend to is to scoop up the razor again, cleaning it off on a corner of the tusken's jacket. It's returned to her back pocket before she walks away, leaving the device behind. She'll be back for it when she realizes it's gone, but the feed will have cut long before then.]

[[ooc; written with ambiguity about her identity in mind. having met her face to face would be conducive to recognizing her. if you're uncertain, feel free to drop me a line. glass city folk are out of luck due to electrical disturbance. action is perfectly welcome from her travelling companions.]]

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[He can't go the same way, although their destination is ultimately the same one - Saya's little enclave, Rosella's valiant defenders. Carla's chance to vent. He doesn't know what her roommate is staying for, perhaps for her - he assumes they're together. But Chase's direction has to be back to where he'd left that cross in the sand, and left his bag.]

Think I didn't die a little bit, too?

[Sound travels strangely, but she's well within earshot, and then he's walking away.]

[She hears him, although actually listening to him takes her most of the slow march back to the current encampment, and even then she has no way of parsing her reaction to it. She feels off balance, mind clouded and skin anxious. It's tempting, to go crawling to Blonde with her hurt, but she can't. There are things that Chase has lured out of her that she is not interested in imparting onto Blonde unless he asks for them. They've made that pact, tacit and simple, there is no pull there, no thorns, no pain. That's why she thinks her affection for him is benign, and that's why she says little about what her doctor does to her, though her roommate is more clever than to be fooled by omission.

The answer, assuredly, is to do what she has always done, find somewhere quiet to curl up around her unhappiness and try to weather through. There's nothing to save her from it here, no bed to fall into, no more monsters to maim, no sugar to drown herself in. Just bad memories constricting inside her chest and bad habits pulling at her fingertips.]

[Hours pass. That their camp has a visitor for the night will be clear, maybe even audible depending how close Carla has settled to wherever Saya keeps her parlour. Chase drops off supplies and stops to talk to her with that odd fondness he has for the woman (and her cars - if nothing else they'll commiserate over that). But it's hours before he finds Carla again, and then he might just be looking in. If she's quiet, sleeping, he'll leave her and find his own place for the night.]

[She isn't sleeping, and that will come as a surprise to no one at all, her body and her mind are uncooperative in that respect more often than they are not. But he knows that, she's stayed up all night only to ask for his company in the morning more than once. She would have done the same tonight if he hadn't appeared first, but there he is and she looks up at him quietly, still curled up on herself, far enough from the others to be left alone, near enough to see them--(him.)--sleep. It's where she's been, blood drying on her face, and her hair is in an awkward tumbling mess down each side of her face and where some of it is still gathered in a band at her neck.]

Done for the day yet?

Not quite.

[He keeps his voice low. Elsewhere people are already sleeping, but he takes her question as invitation. Goes over to where she's huddled and crouches beside.]

I wanted to ask you a question.

[She isn't eager to hear it, and her eyes drop down to her knees, waiting for it.]

[He'd thought of apologising first, but that tactic isn't one she likes either (and he's not quite regretful of what he said). This question, though, is a tough one to ask without coming over lousy with his own vulnerabilities. It may be there's no point to the effort he puts in to try.]

Is that what love means, to you? Someone does something unforgivable and you have to mourn over it - them - the rest of your life?

[A quiet, sideways glance, mouth hidden behind the curl of her shoulder.]

Why?

[Because that isn't quite what's happened, but it gets close, maybe paints the same scene in different colors. It would be hard not to question if they were his.]

[Ask the questions and you'll never have to be the one to explain. Why did that rule never work for him as well as it served the man who taught him? Sighing, rubbing the back of his arm against eyes so streaked with red it looks like a very specifically located sunburn, he settles into the sand beside her.]

I...did something that could be considered unforgivable. [His tone stays measured, flat, no testament to the way everything aches.] She just left. I don't want her miserable over me, I just wonder how much I might have been deluding myself that she- that she actually-

[Coughing fit, thou art a saviour.]

[Carla was never a kind woman. She had an incredible habit of tempering anything that might construed as such with a healthy dose of back-handed insult. It was better that way, more interesting and more honest. It's difficult for her not to smile as he talks, a thin expression not entirely unlike the sickle of a grin she had offered that tusken raider before beating him to death with his own staff. Like a hunter that smells blood--What did he do with the blood he stole?]

Who's mourning who, doctor.

[She left, and he's here--(And getting trashed is the highlight of your bad days now?)--asking a dead woman what it is to love and how long she will mourn.]

I chased her for four years. We were married three months.

[Go on, smile, it's what he's expecting. And it is an absurdity. He stretches a leg out, nudging her foot with his.]

I know you enjoy my sad stories.

[This is just another kind of disinheritance, after all. Another family, even one in potentia, to be shut out of. He's expecting it to amuse. Sometimes even he can smile at it, looking into the dark dregs at the bottom of a bottle.

On that thought: He pulls his bag over his shoulder and retrieves a bottle of water and something from the food rations - caramel and peanuts - to hand off to her. His gloves are off, now that it's dark and it's harder to see the state they're in. Scratched and red, nails torn, one missing.]

Here.

[Who's mourning who? Too obvious to reply.]

[Carla is never one to refuse food, and those who provide it to her rarely understand what an important gesture it is for her. It's better that way, really, that she be kept safe from their manipulation, from the inevitable heartbreak. A monster on a leash still, at the heart of it all. She has not been starving out in the desert, and it is some kind of miracle that her body has not yet rejected any of the filth she has put into it.

The sugar is exciting however, a welcome addition.]

You're a mess.

[And she doesn't even have to include his physical state to be obnoxiously confident in that.]

It's cute.

Nice to have that on authority from the pot.

[Says the kettle, not unpleasantly. He rubs those ragged hands across his face, failing to cool the flush under skin that's turned from gold to bronze with exposure (while most of the camp he came from are lobster red and couldn't tell a fever from a burn).

It doesn't matter that he doesn't really have an answer from her. He'll continue to draw his own conclusions, unfavourable because the world has taught him that favour is a fickle, false thing. He can play false and fickle with the best of them, it's just been a while. Four years. So he just watches her, the shadows across her face, and eventually opens out the the expanse of an arm to her.]

I'm not sure I'm at my most adorable.

[Her own skin is a subtle olive, pale in comparison but darker than the usual cool tone, sun damage across her cheeks. It was her shoulders and neck that had burned the worst, but the peeling skin had healed once she was more attentive to covering it. It matters very little under the blood and dust, however, they're all the same in that regard. Too hot, too dry, clothes stiff with sweat, it's not preferable. She still doesn't hesitate to press into his side. It was what she wanted, what made sense after slinking away from him in confusion and pain.]

And a sad last impression.

[Coffee withdrawal, what a terrible fate.]

You did give me permission to die once you'd seen me.

[Folding her in both arms is easy. Clasping them round her waist, finding a place where his head can rest against the relative softness of her hair. He's not sure it makes sense, but it's not worth holding the feeling up for examination now. God knows how long he's been holding the tension in his shoulders, only becoming aware of it as it finally ebbs for now.]

No stipulation that it had to be impressive.

My entertainment should always be an unspoken stipulation.

[Her voice is softer, a bored little murmur. She can be needy, above and beyond what she finds tolerable, and any chance to indulge it that doesn't hurt her pride is a welcome one.

And she hasn't had the chance to listen to his heartbeat in quite a while, the breath in his lungs. Her hand is cold when she reaches up to lay her palm along the curve of his neck, that's normal for her, however. One more piece of herself that wasn't quite fixed properly by that smiling little bug.]

Should I get up and tap-dance?

[(He'd still like to look at the motor function in those wrists). Her touch may not be cold in any real sense, but as a contrast to the heat of his skin it's something beautiful, acknowledged with a whisper of a gasp.]

[She's noticing, the burn under her hand, and she presses her cheek to his skin where she's tucked under him, considering it silently. She isn't the doctor here, and not so worried that she recoils immediately, so perhaps there's nothing to say.]

Just sit.

[An idle command and she turns her head then, eyelashes on his cheek.]

How much longer are you staying in the sandpit?

Good, my legs are killing me.

[As to her question.]

I'll go back to the camp in the morning. Get my immigration papers and wait it out there a while. Just like home.

[For the moment there's no conclusive evidence that glass is better than sand. Glass shatters. Sand's an ancient building block.]

Will you?

[Because that would be an easy platitude to feed her when she would have no real means to check up on it.]

Maybe that's a good idea.

There are people coming in injured all the time.

[Just a little pointed.]

I'm not high on the priority list to get out of here yet.

Hm.

[She laughs faintly. That was quick, and so she says lazily,]

I've had enough sand.

Want to come back to the camp when I go?

[Quick, too. He's half surprised: from the little that passes between them the glass city seems to have half the desert's savagery (although twice it's potential to cut). But maybe she's not proving a point.]

[Her mouth nudges after his, can play the pest and pretend this is all about her.]

Yes.

Good.

[But he edges back, just his shoulders, just his chin, looking down the slope of his nose at her and questioning with a look.]

010 x 010 // video/action

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round two :|

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