abraxaslogs | Bᴀʙʏ, ᴡʜʏ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏᴠᴇʀ? (closed)

[ Kahlil throws his arm up to block the spray of debris as wings sprout from the giant, glowing -

Rita?

Confused, and still unwilling to move from between what might be a massive, enraged Rita and Jack, Kahlil hesitates briefly before crouching low. The Unseen Edge still crackles between his fingers as his hand lowers with him, but he says quickly to Jack without taking his eyes from Rita: ]

You better calm her down, quick.

( His hand alights on Kyle's shoulder, gentle but firm, pulling him back. Rita can sense the threat in him, the danger baked into Kyle's body language, and it's keeping her feral. It doesn't have to be like this.

Of course, it would be easier to assert himself in a more respectable way if he weren't hopping on one leg. He uses that hand on Kyle's shoulder as a crutch, and with practiced movements, bounce-staggers his way in between his close friend and his close... dragon. )

Hey, hey, hey... shh, easy, girl. It's Kyle, remember? You love Kyle.

( Rita snarls — but then sniffs the air suspiciously, her eyes narrowing at Kyle's face, her foaming, bared teeth leaning in a precarious foot or two, closer, closer, to stare him dead in the eyes. )

It's okay- it's okay. ( This is meant for the man behind him, confident and soothing. ) Just give her a second, just don't- do anything. It's okay, I promise. I won't let her hurt you. Just... remind her who you are.

( It's not that he can control Rita, necessarily — not in any way more secure than a really compelling suggestion she may or may not follow — but he can get rid of her. He knows that, somehow. He can feel it. If he had to, he could pull her out of this reality entirely. He just doesn't want to have to resort to that. It feels... wrong. Bad. Like betraying your dog by sending him to the pound, or something. )

[ Kahlil, for all his calm and cool demeanor in any other tense situation, struggles to force back a sharp, nervous laugh he feels bubbling up his throat when Jack reminds Rita that she loves him and is rewarded with another snarl. The foam coming out of her mouth doesn't help matters. He's not exactly thrilled when Jack puts himself between them, either - and again he struggles with the urge to grab his friend and pull him back, but stops himself.

It takes him a half second to realize that Jack is also speaking to him in that same soothing tone. The deadly sharp edge of the Gray Space between his fingers flickers with his indecision, then vanishes. Kahlil swallows, his posture relaxing - for an ushiri'im this is normally a deception used before striking. However, he's trying to trust Jack rather than his training. ]

We're friends, Rita. [ he starts, slowly. ]

I won't hurt you. Or Jack.

( Kyle makes his promise — and that last little bit, or Jack, seems to tip the scales in the right direction finally. She leans in even closer, her enormous face peering over Jack's shoulder, closer and closer until Jack and Rita are chest to chest with only his skinny body standing between her and Kyle.

Rita looks Kyle directly in the eyes, silent for a tense moment — at least the growling stopped? — and then an enormous tongue lolls out, and she licks Kyle directly in the face.

There's a weird chittering sound and a whine, and she peels back to look at the remains of Kyle's bed, trying visibly to stuff herself up underneath the splinters. Jack's shoulders relax, and he slumps visibly, relieved. )

Jesus Christ. I am- so sorry. I don't know how in the hell that- this- is even.... happening?

( Chunks of wood and pillow feathers are tossed over the giant beast's shoulders in her fruitless attempt to get back to her preferred spot — one which no longer exists. )

Edited 2024-09-10 23:33 (UTC)

[ Kahlil isn't sure if he's supposed to hold her gaze or avert his own. And yet - getting licked in the face by a giant dragon-raccoon foaming at the mouth still isn't the grossest thing to happen to him here.

He stays very still throughout, unsure how to react, especially when she begins trying to get back under what little is left of his bed. Now, he laughs, it puffs out of him in disbelief and his own shoulders finally sag as he feels a tired from the end of the adrenaline rush. ]

It's fine. [ It's fine about his bed, anyway. He stopped storing anything beneath it once Rita first took up residence, and it looks like the night-table and trunk survived, at least. A beat, and he conjures a few berries, tossing them toward Rita's sad pile. ]

Could be the Singularity? [ He raises an eyebrow. Usually when things like this happen, it's because something is agitating the Singularity. ]

I- I don't know. Maybe?

( He shrugs, watching Rita frantically scramble to snatch the berries up and stuff them in her maw. They are much, much less of a mouthful at this size, but she seems to enjoy them all the same. )

Maybe she just... grew up? Very... abruptly. All at once.

( Which sounds stupid, but also wouldn't be the strangest thing to have ever happened around here. )

Does this mean I'm going to have start keeping her in the stables, or-

( No sooner does the thought leave his mouth does Rita start to change again, her prominent wings beginning to shrink at her back; her massive bulk of fur dwindling, her glow dimming, talons shrinking back into little burglar hands. A few transitory seconds later and she's very much just a chonker of a raccoon-moth like she'd been ten minutes ago, and she goes scampering up Kyle's shoulders to groom his hair. Like an apology. )

[ Kahlil very much doubts the castle stables are going to let Large Rita make a nest out of a stall next to the horses. More likely she'll have to make a lair in the woods somewhere, though that leaves her open to other dangers. They'll need to figure something out - except, fortunately, the problem suddenly and neatly solves itself. ]

Okay, okay... [ He's somewhat used to the sensation of her tiny, human-like fingers fussing with his hair, though it's still slightly uncomfortable - he at least understands this to be some sort of raccoon form of affection. He makes no attempt to fight it. ]

... so this has never happened before, yes? [ This he directs at Jack, just to confirm now that no one is panicking anymore.

Jack might notice now, if he looks at Kahlil's face, that there's something slightly off about his eyes. They're normally dark brown, almost black, but in the middle of each iris is now a ring of gold. ]

No. Well- not exactly, I mean she grew up back home, but it wasn't, like, overnight. It took a few years, and a lot more dogfood than she really has access to here...

( He starts, watching Rita's little hands work for a few seconds before he lets his eyes drift back down to Kyle's.

And then he starts visibly, a new furrow in his brow over something that clearly isn't Rita-adjacent. )

Wait- are you wearing contacts, or have those always been like that? Am I just now noticing? Am I going crazy?

Are you feeding her dogfood here...?

[ Rarely are things lost in translation anymore, so he's going to assume Jack means 'food for dogs' and not 'food made of dogs'.

Kyle meets Jack's furrowed look and arches an eyebrow back at him, obviously unaware. ]

Noticing what? [ He touches his face, just near the corner of his eye.]

( Kyle's question goes unanswered — at least for now. He's been wholly and completely derailed by this new revelation, and the deep internal struggle of trying to decide if those have always been like that and his brain is just failing him, or if it's a new thing. )

Your eyes. They're- like, gold, a little. Not totally, just- they haven't always been like that, have they? I'm pretty sure I'd remember them like that. But also... I feel like I do remember it? Like I've seen it before...

( Some way, somehow, this is both new and not new at the same time. He's sure of it. )

[ Kahlil gives him a strange look, some color draining from his face. There's a tall mirror on the other side of the room that he glances toward. He gently removes Rita from his shoulders and deposits her on Jack's bed before walking toward it with a creeping dread in his belly.

He sees himself reflected back, standing in the boxer-briefs that Jack had conjured for them, and as he gets closer he can see what Jack describes - a little gold in the deep, almost black of his brown irises, bright ring. ]

No. [ His tone is flat. ] They're not supposed to be like that.

[ It could be his other gift, he thinks at first - with wary hope. He tries to dismiss the gold the same way he would if he had willingly changed his face, but when he opens his eyes the effect remains. ]

( Rita squawks in some form of protest, but then immediately abandons all sense of regret and curls into a ball on Jack's bed, falling asleep almost instantly. He can't pretend like he's not a little jealous.

He takes a second while Kyle's looking to finally banish the baseball bat and secure his prosthetic on, so he can actually stride quietly across the room without falling over and destroying any other furniture in the process.

He's not the most perceptive when it comes to emotions, but he's better at it with friends than with strangers. There's an unhappiness in Kyle's expression, in his posture, that has him frowning in concern. After a quiet, contemplative beat spent watching his friend close and reopen his eyes, he asks: )

...does it mean something to you?

[ He looks at Jack behind him in the mirror, unable to hide the way his expression briefly looks stricken by the question. Across his shoulder and around his back remains the moth-like scars, the only physical sign on his body from the end of the vision. In the months since then he's gotten used to it, though he supposes it helps that it's partially on his back, not easily seen.

Not like this. ]

I... I don't know.

[ His brow furrows, and he shakes his head as he rans a hand over his face, back through his hair again. ]

Sorry - it just... surprised me. I can probably make it go away.

[ He tries again to will the color from his eyes, unsuccessful a second time. Grimacing, he tries using his other gift, purposefully turning his eyes their usual dark brown. An illusion, but it works for the moment. ]

I mean, I think they look kind of pretty, but obviously if they make you uncomfortable, do whatever you need to do.

( They remind him of — something he can't put his finger on, something not exactly bad. Some kind of positive association that his brain-damaged mind refuses to conjure up so soon after his abrupt awakening from sleep. But if Kyle's got a bad association with it, well, it's none of Jack's business what he does with his own body.

He just wishes his stupid brain would connect the dots on—

Oh wait, hold up. It's coming.

There it is-- he startles, straightening and pointing. )

Wait! Those are like- kind of a little how they were in that whole- you know. Thing. The alternate reality thing. Right?

[ Pretty - that gets a light snort out of him, a quirk of his lips. Maybe they are, or would be, if there wasn't the ominous reminder of what awaits them in the future, or the flash of a dog's jaws clamping onto his shoulder, a witch's curse seeking purchase in his blood...

Kahlil turns around, half-startled himself by Jack's sudden reaction, a giant raccoon just massacred his bed, so he can be forgiven for being slightly jumpier than usual. Both eyebrows raise in surprise. ]

Yes. That.

[ His eyes had gone fully black by the end, the gold more pronounced. He shakes his head, starts walking toward his bed - and almost gets splinters in his bare feet before changing course towards Jack's bed instead, where he sits down heavily. ]

I don't want to be... that.

[ A god. A demon. ]

( Jack follows after him a little more carefully this time, telegraphing his movements as he rounds the mattress to lower himself down beside Kyle, nearer to the headboard. Angled slightly, so that his right knee's folded on the blankets while his left foot plants on the floor for balance.

Kyle's confession is met with a slow nod, and a gentle, understanding furrow in his brow. )

I get it. I don't either.

( The concept of becoming some out of control nightmare thing half the time, that can only be handled by his friends? By Kyle? His memories of it are a little blurry, but he remembers too many close calls. He doesn't want that for either of them. )

But maybe there's- I don't know, maybe there's some benefit to knowing ahead of time, right? We've seen it, and we know what we don't want to be, so maybe we can make better decisions this time. Or- find ways to avoid it, to give away power.

[ They've been friends for so long now - maybe now the longest friendship in his life, and they've talked about this fear of his before, so even with the tension the subject causes him, he's able to relax quickly enough when Jack settles nearby. Kyle lets himself lie back to stare at the ceiling, rubbing the heel of his palm into one eye and wishing for something in his hands to shred instead. ]

Give away to who? [ His brow furrows. The Abraxans want their power, their connection to the Singularity. But that has always put them in danger too, and as far as they know, there's no safe way to transfer that power. ]

( He settles back against the headboard in a lazy slump, following Kyle's eye line up to the ceiling absently. At some point over the last couple of years, either in a sleepwalking fit or by spontaneous generation as he's sometimes wont to do, a handful of glow in the dark stars have taken up constellations over his bed. Nothing even remotely astronomically or astrologically accurate, but they're pretty, and they're something to look at. )

I don't know yet. ( He admits, scratching his fingernails through his hair — too long, he needs a haircut. ) Somebody or something that won't abuse it, or go crazy with it. Definitely not the government. I don't even think it should be other Summoned necessarily, either, even the ones we can trust.

[ The little plastic stars are nice to look up at, he thinks Jack should maybe put more of them across the ceiling. ]

I don't know if it works like that. [ The Rifter cannot just give his power away. They are their power. Is it the same with them? So many of the Summoned believe their arrival is random chance. Kyle isn't sure what to believe anymore. ]

I wish... I don't know. [ He's not sure where he's going with any of this. He takes a moment, then continues quietly: ] You know - I was starting to think I wanted to stay here too.

[ This place where he feels like he knows himself, and has people who know him. He felt like maybe, if he had a choice, he might make the selfish one. But now? ]

( To that, Jack can only shrug. He's heard of things, seen things — given power away himself, but he's also had conversations with Yennefer and Istredd. They have ways, where they're from, to take power from other mages. He didn't ask for the specifics, he heard it involved eels or something? But until it becomes an actually viable course of action, there's probably no point getting hung up on the logistics.

The latter part feels like the more important piece of this conversation right now.

This feels like a Moment. Not that he's historically been the best at identifying those, but he's gotten better the last few years, both in Abraxas and back home. This seems like a time when he's supposed to be supportive and comforting, and actually employ all this progress he's made at being less weird about being familiar with people he cares about.

So, after a second spent hesitating, he reaches out and gently curls a hand around Kyle's wrist. This is what people do, right? It seems like what people do. Just a careful, gentle grip. It's supposed to be I understand and I'm here for you and stuff. God, Rosa is so much better at this part than he is. How does she do it? )

We still have a lot of time to figure something out, okay? We have- years, still. There's a lot of magic, and a lot of really, really intelligent Summoned here. I think there are ways you can still stay, without things spiraling out of control. They don't have to be like they were. We can be better than that.

[ He catches the movement before it lands, more than enough time to move his arm if he wanted to avoid the touch. It still catches him by surprise every so often, the casual, physical affection that comes more naturally for him in both directions now. Has so much of it now that he might just be starting to take it for granted. The people that he's closest to could loose their connection and vanish at any moment. But it's been rare for someone he's become close to in these two years to disappear, when so many others keep losing people. It's Parfir's blessing, he believes, and he doesn't want to waste any of this time.

He closes his eyes. He can't yet find comfort in Jack's words, but he can let the contact remind him that he doesn't need to dwell on these thoughts alone anymore. ]

I know. [ Softly. There are many futures, many paths. He knows better than most. But that experience feeds his fears too, and he turns to look at Jack again. ]

I like who I am. I don't want to forget that.

I like who you are, too.

( He says earnestly. Although, he supposes at the time he'd liked who Kyle had been later, even, in that other world. He hadn't liked himself very much, but he still liked his friend. But yeah, this version is the one Jack got to know, this version is the one he's grown to care about, and if this is the man Kyle wants to keep being, Jack wants that for him, too. )

For what it's worth... ( He starts slowly, reaching over to snag a book by the spine with his free hand and settling it on the quilt beside them. His thumbs drag across the edges of the cover, and then he taps it lightly. ) If you ever do forget, I've got— most of it in here. To remind you.

( He's been writing Kyle for years, now. Small interactions, big rescues. The way he talks, the way he acts, the way they met. His personality quirks, and the pieces of his backstory that he's shared with Jack. All of it is scrawled within the pages of several books and journals, all of it he's willing to hand over if Kyle ever needs to read a reminder of who he's been. )

[ He turns his head to look at Jack, a faint smile pulling at one corner of his lips. Kahlil has never been a permanent fixture in anyone's life. Maybe that's not even true here, where they can wake up to find anyone gone the next day, but Jack was his first friend, the first person to accept him. There was a time nearly two years ago when he'd convinced himself that it could mean something more - then Sabine arrived, and he eventually came to terms with the fact that anything he thought he might have felt would always pale in comparison to what she and Jack had, and would have again if she returned.

While she is gone Kahlil will continue to do this best to protect Jack in her stead, and be his friend.

He watches Jack with curiosity as he pulls the pull over to them, eyebrows slowly raising as he explains what's inside. A warm flush lightly colors his face. ]

This really has me? [ he asks, something both wry and surprised as he touches to cover. ] Not the cool version like - [ he pauses for a second, trying to pull from his ever growing list of Nayeshi references for a cool guy, like Jack has written him before in other stories ] - Antonio Banderas?

Edited 2024-10-12 17:54 (UTC)

( There's a slight, pregnant pause at Antonio Banderas. It's just... such a niche, unexpected reference, particularly coming from Kyle, who rarely ever makes them in the first place. He hasn't thought about Antonio Banderas in like a solid decade, and his lips part to protest — but then it occurs to him that Antonio Banderas played both Zorro and the dad in Spy Kids, so... You know what? Pretty accurate. )

Well- I mean, arguably, I happen to think the real version is also very Antonio Banderas, but... I get what you're saying.

( His recounting of the post-pit rescue tended to focus on the cooler action-heavy details, and less on Kyle's individual traits and qualities as a real human being. His journal is different, and so he nods. )

This really has you. Just normal, every-day, regular Kyle. The stuff you let me see, anyway.

[ He gives a wide grin, sitting upright now. ]

I think you see more than most people.

[ Jack has seen him in his cool moments, and his seriously uncool ones too. But he also means the way Jack pays attention to things maybe others might miss - even if it takes some time for him to process, and always seems to understand. Kahlil doesn't take the book right now, but - ]

Thank you, Jack.

Bᴀʙʏ, ᴡʜʏ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏᴠᴇʀ? (closed)

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wrap?