Tʜᴇʀᴇ's ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʙᴇ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛᴀᴄʜᴇ ᴛᴏɴɪɢʜᴛ

[righteously]

Who: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jo Harvelle, Castiel, Ciri, Geralt, Jaskier, Sam Wilson, probably others that I'm forgetting
When: Last week and a half of May
Where: Cadens, the bad lands, and the Winchester-Harvelle house
What: Demon Dean triggers his master plan to snatch Ciri and take her to the singularity to portal him off-world. The gang catches up and things get violent before Dean is eventually subdued and cured.
Warnings: Demons trying to be as demonic as possible, with all the gross violence and mean language that entails. Also, needles.

𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒
𝐵𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ
𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒
𝐼𝑡'𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛' 𝑤𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑑𝑜
𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦
𝐼𝑓 𝑖𝑡 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
𝑀𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒'𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝐴 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒'𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝐴 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤
𝐿𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤

Comments

[wiedzminka]

[ She lands with a grunt, squirming into a seated position awkwardly, and immediately reaches for the knots of rope around her ankles. ]

There's no point in these. [ Her voice is flat, resigned. She does not reach for the blindfold, though it'd be easier to remove than the ropes. Perhaps his threats have cowed her, or perhaps all that time in the hot sun. Ciri ducks her head, shoulders slumping as she lets out a long breath. ]

I'm hardly going to run across the desert on my own. But if I'm too sick or weak to do what you want, neither of us gets out of this.

Maybe you don't remember what humans need to survive, but food, water and rest are rather at the top of the list.

[righteously]

( His mouth turns down in distaste as she reaches for her ankle ropes, but he makes no move to stop her. Might as well let her loose them for this. The alternative is she pisses all over them and they're stuck with the smell for the rest of the trip. Humans are disgusting creatures, aren't they?

He leans back against a rock while the horse drinks, his arms crossed loosely over his chest, impassive. Unimpressed, unswayed, unsympathetic. )

You can eat on the horse. You can drink on the horse. And you can sleep- guess where?

( On the horse. )

Your little plan to drag ass until your pops can show up? Not exactly a genius maneuver. We're not slowing down. If the horse dies, I'll carry you there myself, and I promise it won't be as pleasant of a ride.

[wiedzminka]

Won't be for you either. [ Ciri mutters, resentfully, but since he's not stopping her, she gets the ropes off her ankles.

After a few moments, she'll chance the blindfold too and see what happens, but if Dean gets his panties all up in a twist about it again, she won't insist. You've heard a man threaten to scoop your eyeballs out once, you've heard it a hundred times. She gets it.

Ciri doesn't bother arguing further. She'll take whatever time is allotted to rest and rally herself a bit, take care of whatever she can, determined to ignore Dean all the while.

She has to wait for the right time. Geralt is a good tracker, but she can help, as long as she can get a better look around where they've ended up. And besides, she has to wonder how much Dean really knows about her abilities, considering not only some fundamental misconceptions, but the fact he's let her loose enough to run.

It's all a matter of weighing the risks when it comes to how unreliable her portalling is, and how reliable the demon's threats may be in turn. ]

[righteously]

( He draws the line at the blindfold. The second she goes to reach for it, he'll grab her by the wrist. One slightly-too-tight squeeze as a warning, and then a slow release to measure whether or not she's going to try to yank the thing off the second he lets go.

As time ticks by with her on relatively good behavior, his guard slowly drops a little. He steps away enough to stretch, to check on the horse's water supply, to offer it a little bit out of the feedbag. Even steps around to rummage through the saddlebags for something to thrust into her hands later, once they're back on the road. Bread, probably. Something to hold her over.

It's prime time for an escape attempt, which surely could only end well. )

[wiedzminka]

[ She doesn't put up a fuss, grunts something along the lines of fine, I get it and keeps her hands away from her face as she fumbles through taking her allotted rest time.

All the while, Ciri keeps her head down, moves slowly. Perhaps it seems to be out of fear, or at least because of the blindfold; it's mostly because she's straining her hearing to catch every footstep and rustle of clothing and saddlebags, trying to place where Dean is the whole time.

When his footsteps retreat some ways and she hears him messing with something for a good few seconds, she decides it's now or never.

On the one hand, she could play nice, sit still and hope that Geralt can use the sparse clues he's got so far to find her soon. The demon needs her alive, after all. And despite its threats, she's fairly sure it wouldn't risk the grand plan by severely injuring her. But the fact also remains that the desert is vast, and Geralt may be a literally superhuman tracker, but he's still limited by things like the passage of time and the huge distance.

By now, she's recovered enough from the struggle before that using her powers seems within reach. The fact they're unreliable is... a problem. But something should happen. If she ends up in the ocean again, at least she's not tied up.

Ciri reaches for the magic, screwing her eyes shut tight behind the blindfold and taking a deep breath. It used to be so easy. Like reaching toward a fire to feel its warmth. With the Singularity's interference, she's reaching through thick mud, knowing there's an ember in there somewhere.

She imagines, in as much detail as she can muster, her home in Cadens. The hearth, the sofa, the tables and chairs, Mog's little bed, the scent of fresh-baked bread that mixes with leather and sword oil, the precise color and pattern of the rug. Reaching for that flame. Stepping forward.

But nothing happens.

Breathless, angry and frustrated, feeling her window of opportunity becoming narrower by the moment, Ciri tries the next best thing. While Dean's still rustling and making noise far enough away to afford perhaps a sliver of a moment, she reaches up to shove her blindfold up just enough. And the moment anything is visible, Ciri reaches again for the more familiar door, lunging forward before Dean can catch her--

And vanishing, only to reappear about fifty feet away. There, she rips off her blindfold and does it again, this time reappearing another hundred feet or so in the distance, desperately scanning the horizon for landmarks. And anything she can use as a weapon. ]

[righteously]

( He feels it a split second before it happens — like the way hair stands on end before a lightning strike. It feels like goosebumps at the back of his neck, it feels like something charging. The coalescence of power, of fuel, waiting to be sparked. Engine fuel, waiting to ignite. He whips around, but not even his reflexes are fast enough to stop it before it happens.

She's gone.

The faintest flicker of movement has his eyes snapping to where she lands some fifty feet away. He pulls out his rifle. Aims it at her.

She's gone again, further this time — a hundred and fifty feet. Fifty yards. Even as a human he could still make this shot easy. As a demon, it's practically fish in a barrel.

There's a crack from his gun as loud as thunder. Two inches to her right, a bullet embeds itself into rock, sending a spray of dust and pebbles exploding around her. Before the dust settles enough to see clearly again, he calls out: )

Next one won't miss! Don't think I won't just blow your brains out to be petty.

( Frankly, if it seems like he can't catch her before she gets away, and it's a choice between her escaping or him killing her and ruining his own plan? Screw it, he'll find a plan B. Demons are nothing but spite and blood. If he can't have her, nobody can. )

Jump again and see if I'm bluffing. Do it. Go on. I wanna see if your daddy cries when he finds the body. Do it.

[wiedzminka]

[ Unfortunately for Ciri, she knows that her own limitations are going to hit before the demon's -- if it has any. She's already not at her best, tired and dehydrated, having all-too-recently gone through the weeks of captivity, near-starvation and fucked-up rituals. On a good day, she can get four or five short jumps in a row before needing to recharge for at least a couple of minutes. Today is not a good day.

Before Ciri can blink out of the way again, the jagged rock outcropping by her head explodes with a thunderous bang, showering her with debris.

This will have to be enough.

The demon thinks this is an escape attempt; it's not. She knows she can't get far enough like this, after her attempt at portalling away for good had failed so thoroughly. No, her main plan was always to leave as many clues for Geralt as possible, and keep relying on him -- considering there's pretty much nothing else she can do.

The threats barely register. Her focus is on her surroundings. Ciri grabs the side of the now-broken large rock, using the sharp edge to slice open her palm, smearing blood along its side. It might look like she stumbled, startled by the gunshot, grabbing the rock for support.

She doesn't respond, but neither does she move again.

As the demon approaches, Ciri palms a rock shard, and at the same time sends Geralt a flurry of disjointed messages containing only descriptions of what she can see around them before Dean puts the blindfold back on. ]