abraxaslogs | {You took my life and wrecked it

Entry tags:

{You took my life and wrecked it

Who: Inej or Klaus + Various
When: Month of September
Where: Cadens / Solvunn + Nocwich / the Horizon
What: Various threads through the month.
Warnings: Inej: stealing; murder; descriptions of touch aversion, anxiety, depression, PTSD; heavy trust issues, paranoia; mentions of past instances of prostitution, slavery, and sexual assault. Everything will be clearly marked if-when it comes up.
Klaus: flippant references to child abuse/neglect/violence, mentioned and played out use of drugs/alcohol/other facets of addiction, mentions of death/the dead/ghosts, descriptions of depression/anxiety/panic attacks/suicidal ideation/PTSD; will clearly mark if-when it comes up.

but I've been resurrected

Yeah, baby, I'm the Comeback Kid

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"It's a- stupid Earth thing. What worked and didn't work doesn't matter. What matters is what they wanted me to do." Earth is dumb and while she's glad she doesn't have- whatever the fuck happened to her friends in her head, she still thinks grown-ups are stupid and don't realize what they ask.

"Oh no, he's not lecturing me. But he is able to see me while I'm hiding and track me down basically anywhere across the city." Geralt is absolutely a man of no words unless he has to, Julie's lecturing her in this. "Julie got real mad I followed her along on her stupid plan to explore a monster location. You know, without telling her."

[Well. Maybe he needed this conversation more than anyone, Inej included, had realized at all, if the way he just suddenly pours it all out in one go. Like he’s ready to burst if he doesn’t. Like he’s just been waiting for someone to give him permission for it.

She doesn’t interrupt his spiel, instead waiting until he’s done before she makes any comments at all.]

I don’t think that’s true…

[She frowns a little. It doesn’t make sense with what she’s heard from him, either, really? She’s a bit confused and it shows.]

I don’t know why he would have pulled away, but… I’m sure he’s got his reasons.

[That aside— her tone is much more sure this time, a level of certainty that really doesn’t have much room for argument.]

But I do know this: He cares about you, Wylan, deeply. And you both owe it to yourselves to capture this moment in a bottle, okay?

[She thinks about it for a moment and, catching his hand in hers, adds, in a way that makes it obvious she’s quoting someone or something: ]

“The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.”

[Her eyes soften and she squeezes his hand gently in her own.]

Do you understand?

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” said with all the righteous indignation any teenager can easily muster.

She makes an ‘Ah’ sort of face and nods, “My mistake,” she shakes her head a little at the clarification all the same. “If you helped, you helped- that should be the most important part of it all.”

[This isn’t the first time Sam has been to check on her— she remembers the busywork sounds of him with Jesper at one point— but it is one of the times she’s been able to sit up almost properly.]

Hey- yeah, definitely better. [She nods a bit and smiles.] Still sore, but it’s not as bad as it was.

"Earth grown ups are like that, even the cool ones." And this is why Abby likes having friends her age where she can get them.

"I didn't really help with Julie's bullshit plan, but I didn't faint and scare the fuck out of everyone." Is she more mad at the double standard, or the fact Julie did something stupid. Who can say. "I don't regret what I did and if they want me to stop they'll need to find a good way to lock me up."

"I have wine and pot, so..." Nadine shrugs. Though the latter more than the former. "But when the US got really anti-smoking, the school I worked for put a lot of pressure on teachers to quit. Considering we were an elementary school, I get it."

They were supposed to set a good example and it was a small town. Couldn't be doing anything that could corrupt the youth.

Look at her now.

"Cannabis is better anyway. It tastes a lot better than tobacco. I think I only smoked because I...wouldn't do anything else. No drugs, no alcohol...I had to do something."

She lights the joint with another thought and takes a long drag. It's only been here, in Abraxas, that she's allowed herself to indulge and to let her mental state be altered. Back home, it was too much of a risk.

[ he smiles at her as she sits up, and even though it's an improvement, he's still...not happy with the shape she's in. he makes a note to have nadine check in on her, just to make sure everything's going at the speed it should. ]

Good. I'll take sore. Feel up to eating?

“I guess that makes sense, don’t tempt the impressionable youth,” he says with a higher tilted tone than his usual in a singsong voice at the end, fingers of his ~~right~~ ‘hello’ hand in a twirl above them. He laughs once at that and drops his hand back down again.

He plucks the joint from her fingers once she offers it his way, “Mmm, can’t blame you. We all have… our… vices,” he mumbles around the joint now tucked between his lips. He takes a long, deep inhale and lets a shudder run down his spine. Melodramatic as ever.

"Oh, I had a whole morality clause." Which was standard for that sort of place. "Don't miss that."

There's honestly plenty that Nadine doesn't miss from that life. This one is, by almost any comparison, much better.

"But you're right, I think everybody needs some kind of vice. Even if it's just...chocolate or cola. Actually...do you want an RC? I could really go for an RC cola right now." That's one of the things she does miss, but can easily replicate here. Cadens has carbonated drinks, sort of, but it's not the same. And Klaus looks like a guy who appreciates an underdog soda.

She tosses him a little grin.

"Need to rehydrate."

[ Wylan smiles softly at her. It's nice to have someone to talk to about this. He never really had anyone he could talk to, besides Jesper really, and that had still been relatively new. ]

I think so?

[ He thinks she understands what she means by that. ]

I wish I had your conviction, every time I talk to him I just can't help but wonder why he even bothers. [ Sorry, Inej, you're going to get all his insecurities now. ]

You know what you want… now you just have to be as direct as possible about it. With yourself, as much as him.

[Because if Wylan isn’t honest with himself first, he can’t be honest with Jesper either.

She will handle his insecurities with gentle hands. At that comment, she smiles softly.]

You’ll never know the girl I used to be, Wylan… most of my conviction is in my faith, with my Saints. The rest? [She leans in a bit, careful of the way the movement that might tug at the soreness in her side. She smirks.] Mostly out of spite.

"That's...weird as shit," he says through a laugh, but then he realizes maybe it isn't? His life isn't the most typical after all, and he adds, "is that normal in a job?" He has... never really worked a typical day job a single day in his life, actually.

He hums a soft agreement and grins, "Holy shit, I haven't had an RC in years!" Which is pretty much the same as an enthusiastic yes as she might get.

"It's normal for teachers at private schools, yeah. Parents pay big bucks to send their kids there, they have 'expectations'. So we couldn't do anything that could be considered 'immoral, deceptive, scandalous or obscene' or 'tarnish, damage or otherwise negatively affect the school's reputation'. Which is very vague, but..."

The implications were pretty clear. Live clean or lose your job. Which really hadn't been a problem for Nadine. That was how she'd be living without the job anyway. It had all worked out, in a way.

With a little laugh she summons up a pair of chilled, bottled RCs. Bottled is always best, particularly straight out of a corner store cold case.

"I meant it when I said you wouldn't even recognize me if you met me when I was younger."

“Some of us are just lovers rather than fighters,” an airy remark with a lax tone and somewhat of a comment over the fighting they all endured recently. Lately he’s been regressing in ways that he’s not sure how to feel about, but that’s the beauty of people like Klaus. He can forget any nonsense and make his own.

He also recalls their last conversation and there’s plenty to uncover in what makes up a man who seems to have more than meets the eye. He curls his fingers and brings the roll up piece in-between his mouth with the will of a simple spell, and from there inhales what is the taste of rose petals amongst the weed. When he exhales, the puff of smoke comes together in a display of a singular rose before it dissolves.

“Give your dealer a kiss for me. These are spectacular. And you can do much with magic, Klaus. Run wild with that pretty head of yours.”

Wylan doesn't always venture out to Nocwich- even after all these months he's still a little unsure about, well, everything. But he's trying to make more of an effort to put himself out there and branch out from the few people he's friends with. It's on his way back towards the portal to return to Cadens that Wylan spots Klaus, he's lying back in the grass and Wylan's first instinct is to check on him.

"Are you okay?" He asks once he is close enough and standing over him looking down with concern.

I suppose you're right. [ He's not sure why he's surprised, he was always the one that made the first move with Jesper.

He grins at her. ] Well, then, I wish I had your spite sometimes.

Klaus is sprawled on the grass in something of a messy heap and it's not surprising that a random passerby might think him injured, too drunk to function, or otherwise in need of help.

It might be the cause of surprise to the boy who approaches him when he grins, a wide, crooked thing and practically sings, "Ohhh, I'm fine," he stretches not unlike a cat in the sun and tilts his head to one side as he stares up at him. "Are you okay?"

A beat.

Another grin, this time accompanied with a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Do you wanna be even more okay?"

"Nadine," he rolls his head to one side to level her with a look, and though his tone is just this side of severe, the smirk on his face betrays all of it. "did you just recite something from your contract with them from memory?"

He laughs, a delighted sound when the bottles appear. The Horizon is still so novel to him– good thing he didn't have access to a literal world of his own creation when he was in the worst throes of addition, actually.

"I think you'd know me just the same," which is, perhaps, a kind of sad thing to admit. That he hasn't changed that much from when he was young. No real growth in who he is has happened, stunted by the trauma and hindered by addiction and fear.

He grins at that comment and nods, "Exactly." Some might argue that's just a coward's quote, it sounds pretty without having to actually take up the space of

Klaus leans back, propped on his arms stretched behind him and watches Eliot's little display with amusement. "Even your smoke rings are pretty," he says with a quick wink and a flirtatious smirk. He has eyes, thank you.

"I will, the next time I see her," and he means it- he and Nadine have a fun roll in the horizon sheets from time to time. He practically preens at being called pretty and plucks the joint from were it hovers in the air to take another hit. Some things, he feels, should be left to non-magical ways. "I'm still getting used to the whole magic thing," he admits, "it wasn't like this at home."

He doesn't want to hurt you... he's happy to have you in his life in whatever way you wish. But I think he's scared to push.

[Because it is a lot to come into fresh and new, without having been there from the beginnings like she and Jesper; Kaz and Wylan both walked into something unexpected when they arrived here, it takes time to adjust and figure out how to move forward. But moving forward does need to be the end goal, regardless of the shape it takes.

She grins back.]

I'll let you borrow it, if you like.

Not surprised so much as relieved- he isn't sure what he would have done with the guy if something was actually wrong. He quirks an eyebrow looking down at him, unable to keep a wary smile off his face, there is something about him that's inviting and compelling, almost like Jesper.

"I'm okay. Do I want to know how'd I'd be even more okay?" He isn't sure really.

"It's a standard morality clause, that's the wording for all of them. You'd probably be surprised at how common they were. They have a lot of wording about behavior, but in 'our' time, it was mostly an excuse to fire people over dumb social media posts. At least in the US I come from. Pretty unpopular opinion, but the end of the world wasn't all bad. Society was...a mess. And just getting worse."

Nadine knows that God did not send the plague. If anyone did, that would be her MIA husband. Though she suspects he just sort of helped things along. But the fact remains that the world had been a in a bad state and heading towards a worse one. So much of what was wiped out...could probably stand being wiped out.

Of course then half the survivors just wanted to rebuild things back the way they were. What was wrong with people? Flagg was a monster, but at least he'd been trying to do something different. Horribly, horribly different.

"Some people are always who they are, Klaus. And some of us go through life hiding who we are. I hid who I was, for a lot of reasons."

Sometimes it would be nice to be pushed a little. [ Not too much, but at least he would know Jesper still wanted him. ]

That would be nice. It's a good motivator. [ He looks down for a moment, weighing something in his mind. ] Kaz is trying to teach me how to read.

I know what you mean. [Hmm. Is she going to have to meddle to get the two of them to just talk this out? Don't test her. She'll do it!

She smiles a little, but there's no hiding the confused pinch of her brow; it's pretty obvious she didn't know about it before this moment.] How's that going?

[Kaz. As a tutor?]

“Tell me a bit about home then. What sort of nonsense did you and your lot get to?” He’s assuming Klaus has others who were with him, if only because he’s trying to picture Klaus in his ambition. He seems to lean into others. Eliot knows that all too well. He has used people in other ways. Right now he genuinely is wanting to know more of the world Klaus comes from. He likes to pretend he doesn’t care, but deep down he does if he ends up tangled somehow. He has yet to find out how in Abraxas.

“You’ll have to introduce me.” And it won’t be the same interest Klaus has since he can also pick up that Klaus is sleeping with his dealer, which honestly - who hasn’t? Get it. The current flow of smoke lingers in front of them as he continues to let it mingle near him as it hits just how nice it’s starting to feel. When he’s looser, he tends to also be nicer by a slight.

“Maybe I’ll consider teaching you a spell or two if you ever take magic up.”

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{You took my life and wrecked it

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Super Late but with Starbucks (or a tiny cinnamon roll)

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