abraxaslogs | september catch-all; open

Well, if Kyle is going to leap out of a tree, as graceful as a cat, then the least Wilhelm can do is scrape himself up from the grass. He holds himself awkwardly, arms folding over his chest and an apology lurking in his eyes.

"Yeah," he lies. Agreement is easier than explaining. "I was just taking a break, though."

That part is true, if the break is measured in weeks rather than minutes.

He should be more careful about teasing the young man, he reminds himself.

"That's good."

He hums at that answer, turning to poke around in the grass the toe of his boot until he locates the offending stick where it'd fallen. Kahlil picks it up, studying it for a moment before glancing up at Wilhelm again, canting his head to one side and both eyebrows raised in question.

"Would you show me?"

What he's learned from his practice.

Wilhelm balks for a solid second — groping for an excuse for why he can't, and coming up empty handed. Instant karma for lying.

"Uh, sure..."

He unknots his arms, swinging them a bit in an effort to limber up his nerves. Eyes closed and head bowed, palm turned to the sky and fingers curled as if to clutch the fire that's supposed to come, he measures his breath in steady seconds. Maybe this time will be different.

Or maybe not. Though he tries to sink into himself, he's all too aware of Kyle waiting patiently beyond his eyelids. Tentatively, he reaches for something to spark his flame. He tries to place himself in the gym with August, his cousin's watery apology more like gasoline. He reconstructs his mother's voice on the other end of the phone in those minutes before he cut the call.

But as Wilhelm nears that state of rage simmering unseen, his focus wobbles. His head fills with the smoke of burned-down cities. His stomach churns.

No fire appears in his hand. Instead, pallor drains his face, and his breath bucks the constraints of the rhythm he's set.

He waits and watches, and as the seconds drag on he senses something not quite right. The last time he'd seen Wilhelm work with fire - he wouldn't call it effortless, but it wasn't like this.

After half a minute of watching the young man struggle he steps forward, speaking with calm control.

"Wilhelm, stop."

He'll feel Kyle's hand gently curl around his shoulder unless he manages to step away.

He tenses under Kyle's hand, breath jumping in surprise and eyes springing open. Though he's quick to turn aside, he doesn't pull away from Kyle.

"Fuck," he breathes, hands shoved into his hair, forming cover under which to collect himself for a second. Come on, get your shit together. As a ward against actually throwing up, he keeps his mouth clamped shut and inhales through his nose. And release. His hands ball together in front of him. An explanation of some kind is required, Wilhelm realizes.

"It's just...harder to concentrate when I'm tired. I haven't slept well lately."

Another technical truth, but his eyes are avoidant.

When he doesn't immediately pull away, Kahlil gives Wilhelm's shoulder a soft squeeze.

"There's been a lot going on," he says, understanding. It's still in the air around them, the faint scent of smoke and ash from the burnings. After a second he lets his hand fall back to his side, but he doesn't move any farther away.

"What do you see when you try?"

When he tries to sleep, or when he tries to summon fire. Maybe they both have similar answers, maybe not. He lets Wilhelm decide which to answer.

As small a thing as it is, the light squeeze helps to re-center him. The lurching wave of nausea is receding. Wilhelm isn't sure if Kyle means when he tries to sleep, or when he tries to conjure fire, but they're two strands of the same tangled question, really. It takes him a moment to answer, not because he means to lie again, but because the answer is a many-headed beast and he doesn't know which head to start with.

"I keep seeing the fireballs," he finally says. His arms are crossed again, closing him up. "Falling from the sky and destroying that city."

As the queen had shown them all in the throne room. He wishes that he could have hidden longer, that the guard wouldn't have found him and forced him to go. He wonders if he'd be so fucked up about it if he hadn't watched it happen.

That wouldn't bring back the dead, though.

"I wish I could tell you that one day it will go away for good. It'll fade, over time, everything you see and feel. But then one day something will remind you, and it'll come rushing back."

He shakes his head, eyeing Wilhelm sympathetically.

"You could ask the healers for a draught to help you actually get some peaceful sleep. But this - " he holds his hand out, mirroring Wilhelm's position from earlier - " - you can't avoid forever."

His power. Maybe he could get lucky and it'll remain blocked. But Kahlil doubts it. A power like Wilhelm's seems connected to his emotions. This dam holding it back isn't secured on purpose, and it's likely his power will come rushing out one day, whether he means it to or not.

Under that sympathetic gaze, his eyes turn aside. Kyle's perpetually placid demeanor at once soothes him and frustrates him. Sometimes Wilhelm feels like he's the only one here who doesn't know how to take all of this in stride. He's the first to crack as the pressure compounds, the last to pick himself back up.

In this moment, tangled around his own problems, it doesn't hit him that Kyle could be speaking from experience. All he's wondering is if his stupid brain can even let go of anything.

"I was thinking," he starts haltingly, fingers fidgeting, "I mean...maybe it's just time I call it quits on this magic stuff. As long as I'm not a walking fire hazard anymore, then do I really need to know anything else?"

Can't avoid it forever? Bet.

Edited 2022-11-04 03:34 (UTC)

"Not unless you can remove the power from yourself completely."

Kahlil can't say whether that's possible or not. He's never heard of abilities bestowed to someone here being taken away.

You were gifted this power for a reason, he wants to say. But he holds his tongue at that part - so much of what he's trying to say is already hitting the brick wall of Wilhelm's teenage willful attitude, and fear.

He pauses for a second, eyeing Wilhelm's anxiously moving fingers.

"Have you had any combat training? Weapons, wrestling..."

Literally anything.

Wilhelm's frown tightens. When he had finally gotten the hang of summoning fire to his hand and dismissing it again, he actually felt proud of himself. This power belonged to him in a way that so few things in his life ever really have. And now...it's just another thing he wishes he could reach in and rip out of himself. Another thing he can't handle.

"No," he says in that defiantly sullen way of someone who knows that the answer must come as a disappointment. A pause, then a shrug, a bobbing of his head from side to side as if weighing out his next thought. "Well, I know how to use a rifle. But that doesn't really...count, it was just at the shooting range. Clay pigeons."

He looks at Kyle.

"Why?"

Knowing how to use a rifle is at least something, even if it's not as useful here in Thorne where they aren't used.

At the question he rests his hands on his hips akimbo and cocks his head slightly.

"Because I'd like to teach you some basics of hand to hand combat, if you're interested."

It might be a good distraction from the issue with his magic. Give him some confidence back, and then see what they can do about that mental block.

Somehow, it's not where he anticipated this conversation to turn. But everything revolves around the coming war now, doesn't it? Lucifer's warning echoes in his mind: Your title means nothing to anyone in charge. I don't think there's any more playing under the radar.

"You think I'll need it?"

He can't hide the tic in his jaw any more than he can hide the anxiety thinning his voice. His fingers sort of cannibalize themselves in the meantime, nails picking at skin.

"I hope that you won't, but I'd feel better if you knew how."

The uptick in Wilhelm's anxiety at the suggestion doesn't go unnoticed, though, and his brow furrows, his posture relaxing a bit.

"I won't force you to."

He's not like Dayyid. He won't force the boy to learn, won't beat him within an inch of his life with the intent of impressing upon him the inherent risk of his position. Wilhelm already seems afraid enough: of his own power, of the war ramping up.

Catching himself — or rather, catching Kyle's gaze — he swings his arms back to his sides. He shakes his hands out, tries to hold them still, and ends up crumpling them together behind his back. His eyes smooth shut for a second. Come on. In through his nose, out through his mouth.

"No, it's... It would be good for me to learn how to defend myself."

If he can't do anything else, he can at least try not be such an easy target. And this at least aligns more naturally with him than magic — he's decently athletic. Though, committing to studying self-defense makes the war all the more starkly real. Not that it didn't already hold enough weight to crack his ribcage and smash his heart, but now that pressure gathers more density.

"I'll do it."

He watches Wilhelm work through the decision, fifty-fifty on which way it might land. When he finally answers, Kahlil smiles at him.

"We'll start tomorrow. Basic battle forms, to start. Meet me here in the morning at seven, wear something you can move easily in."

He expects Wilhelm might object to either starting so soon, the early hour, or both, but he sees no reason to put it off now. This part of the gardens is relatively untraveled, and the ground is soft.

Oh, there's definitely the start of a complaint on his tongue. It's in the pinching of his eyebrows and the wrinkling of his nose. But Wilhelm swallows it, letting nothing more than a soft scoff out. Begrudgingly, he nods.

"Okay. I'll...see you then."

At an hour he hasn't been conscious for in months. Awesome.

Belatedly, he thinks to add, "Um, thanks, Kyle. For helping me."

Because it's time out of Kyle's day, too. Effort he could choose to expend on someone else. Wilhelm just hopes he can prove to be more than a waste of that time and effort.

september catch-all; open

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