logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: october 9-17.
content: the hallucinations begin...
warnings: psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

it's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud

October 9 feels like a normal day at first, save for the red lighthouse beam cutting through the darkness overhead. You know by now—or you've heard—that the lighthouse is only active during ferry arrivals and events... And there's definitely no ferry docked at the, er. Beach. The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! Will did warn you all about the effects of living without a sun and a proper day/night cycle.

As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever!

...Right?

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[It's a perspective that's intimately familiar. How long, after all, had Bruce lived inside this very same space? How many years had he spent consumed by his grief, unable to lift his head and see any kind of future beyond the pain that never eased? Time has not healed the wound. Time has not made it any easier to bear.

He suspects that the same is true for Riku.

That doesn't excuse his recklessness, nor does it mean he should be allowed to see it through. It's too easy to destroy the self. Shockingly easy.

Bruce's hand begins to lower, reaching for the smoke bomb he'd slipped inside his shoe; his strategy is to distract and disguise his approach, so that Riku's focus will yield and Bruce will be able to close the distance without incident. That isn't what happens. Riku's fist swings through the air and though the first narrowly misses him only because of the angle he's bent at, it brings them so close to one another that detection is impossible to avoid. There's a moment where Bruce's eyes widen behind his mask, naked surprise that he's been detected somehow- and then Riku's fist collides with his face. It smashes into his nose. The pain is immediate and so is the blood. His eyes water.

So Bruce lunges forward at his knees instead, buckling them as he tackles the other boy to the ground, landing hard in the leaves.]

[ Right now, Riku doesn't see a future worth being in that doesn't have his friends in it. Sora always had this... knack. This keen instinct for getting his way into someone's heart. Maybe that's why he made Riku promise. Like some part of him knew how necessary it would be for reasons that aren't as obvious as being the light that guides Sora back.

It works. Riku presses forward and tries to contribute to a future that might see the return of the light. He reaches out, forges new connections, tries to impart on them the experience of those who came before. The progression isn't the problem, it's the moments when he pauses long enough to think, the reminders that knock him around inside this box of broken glass that is his grief.

Bruce knows a lot about that. This is easier than questions like what has prompted Sora's return and why he isn't speaking to him, this is direct, a target when they usually aren't afforded the luxury of a direct outlet that won't annihilate them where they stand.

It happens quick. One second when Bruce's eyes widen behind his mask and Riku's teal gaze locks on, sharp and angry.

To Bruce's credit, he doesn't cringe at the pain, he retaliates with the sort of reflexes that could have impressed Riku if his head wasn't a violent shatter looking for something else to cut as badly as he's been. He grew up a soft hearted kid with an old soul, somewhere along the way he acquired a temper. Bruce lunges and they both go down hard, Riku's breath gusting out of his lungs.

The struggle that ensues is desperate, the longer he's on the ground the greater the distance between him and Sora will grow; Riku can't exactly throw off easily someone who is proving as tenacious as the masked man, either. They grapple, this close even the short jabs Riku attempts to aim at his side don't have much force behind them, but if he can manage to turn, it'll be Bruce with less room to maneuver. ]

[Riku doesn't look willowy, he looks strong. He carries it differently than the thugs roaming the streets in Gotham, who roll their shoulders walk with an exaggerated confidence, drawing attention to their arms and chests while meandering- slow on their feet. Riku's figure is different, the muscle in his arms looks earned, perhaps through labor. He'd known about the boathouse as the ferry was sinking which suggests more than a passing familiarity so perhaps he worked dockside or as a fisherman. He's never overstated his presence, as if he has nothing to prove and no reason to do so. Bruce's surprise comes when they connect and Riku doesn't bodily startle, he rolls into it.

He'd made mention of his history in passing over the network, combat experience. It's apparent here not in the strength with which he retaliates, but in the ease of the transition. Riku lands on his back but there's no moment of shock or hesitation; he moves easily onto the offensive.

Bruce inhales through his mouth, and recalculates.
Riku's expression twists. Bruce grapples for his arm, tries to hook his leg- he succeeds and is dislodged just as readily, and that too becomes an exchange. He isn't, at any moment, afraid for his life because despite the pain on Riku's face, killing Bruce isn't his priority. He still wants to pursue whatever that vision was, it's the reason he still glances up and the reason his blows aren't as devastating as they could be. The fabric of the mask smears blood across his face- into his mouth and around his nostrils. Sweat plasters his hair to his forehead and streaks down his temple, over his brow, into his eye.

His stomach goes taut and Bruce has to fight the instinct to double over- to draw his arms and knees in to protect the ribcage that Riku's knuckles continue to smash against. Pain crackles through him, radiating across his body. But with Riku on top of him, pinning him to the earth, he loses the advantage of gravity. He has to endure it instead. Bruce grunts through clenched teeth and jerks the arm caught over his head, smacks Riku's face and promises a black eye in the process- but that isn't his goal. He needs Riku to bear down harder on that side because it leaves him off balance, if he's going to try and keep Bruce from striking him again and keep peppering his side with jabs.

That imbalance is what Bruce is banking on. The moment he feels his weight tip just beyond the halfway point, one leg will snap up and bend, curl around Riku's leg and Bruce will push- roll them over, reverse their positions to land on top.]

[ There's discipline in his opponent - in the way he doesn't give in to the instinct to protectively curl into himself, in how he keeps trying different ways to get at him, to overcome him - signs that lead Riku to think he's been trained in this. Not by some carefully curated lesson plan, no militant conditioning, but something more down to earth.

Experienced. Or trained by someone who knows what it means to brawl in the dirt and come out on top. He's leaner than Riku but that doesn't mean his masked pursuer is weak, where Riku might have the advantage in brute strength, his opponent is clever and ever-changing in his strategy. At a better time, he'd be challenged to keep up with how the masked one is thinking steps ahead, at a time like this, Riku can only react.

The other boy wrenches free the arm he's been trying to pin to the ground above his masked head, elbow crashing into the bony ridge of his eye socket. By the crackle of bright pain and the heat that fills it a second later, Riku knows it'll leave him with a black eye; it means he draws back his arm and drops his fist not against Bruce's side but aiming higher, for his cheek.

You feel it, don't you? The potential. This one knows the darkness. Has yielded to it, just as you have, boy. Just as you will again.

That's the opening Bruce was waiting for, the world spins and the frost-tipped undergrowth crunches under Riku's back. He grabs at him, trying to put his palm between them, to try to press up against sternum or shoulder for distance. Without it, he'll be pinned down-

Riku's throaty grunt of effort and his glare, his whole body stops like a startle, reacting to something Bruce can't hear.

He's fought by Sora's side and he's fought against him. There's been enough time and opportunities to know the sorts of sounds he makes when it's exertion and effort, the sort of exhales when he's putting his whole self behind a swing of his keyblade, the cry he makes when he's hurt- and badly.

What he thinks he hears is worse because it cuts out sharply, almost as soon as it started and, ironically, Riku almost questions if he heard it at all. Then he hears the crash of something metal and glass like it's collided so hard against something it exploded into that tinkle of broken pieces.

Sora's lantern had metal and glass and too many lights inside.

It's not accurate to say that Riku stops fighting, he's just not throwing punches. There's a sudden change in tactic where Riku's trying to claw for a hold on Bruce secure enough to throw him off, straining towards where he'd supposedly watched him depart. ]

Sora? [ There's an edge of something in the next yell, something that makes his throat sound tight and dry in the cold. ] Sora?!

[Wait him out Master B. Alfred's voice travels to him like a memory, but then that's everything Bruce has heard since these hallucinations started. There's nothing new and creative, only repetitions of conversations that have already happened, that can't be changed. Maybe there's something telling in that- that the things that haunt Bruce most are in the past. Things that can't be prepared for. Things that are part of him.

The snap-punch of Riku's fist slams the inside of Bruce's cheek against his jaw, tearing tissue and splitting his lip, flooding his mouth with the taste of blood. But the blow he lands is enough; Bruce has his opening, and he takes it.

His teeth grit, streaked with red, and he shoves, rolls. Dirt is dug up beneath their heels and behind his head, it's under his clothes and in his hair and Bruce doesn't stop for anything. Riku seems to falter immediately, a whole body recoil to finding himself on his back. His hand comes up between them and spasms, tries to maintain a few inches of space and with it a few inches of leverage. His fingers flex in the fabric at Bruce's throat, they slap against his collar bone. But Bruce keeps bearing forward, drives his knees into the soil over Riku's hips, low enough that he can't get momentum beneath his legs when he tries to swing, low enough that the socket is trapped in a half-rotation. Bruce turns his face and spits, clears the worst of the copper and jerks back around.

He expects the fight in Riku to accelerate, fueled by rage and adrenaline, but instead he watches his attention divide. It looks like his awareness is half inside the woods and before Bruce can wonder at the cause, about why Riku's punches have slowed, he screams Sora?!

It's a horrible sound.
He doesn't need to ask, to know what he's imagining.

His body starts to go taut, the moment before he'll inevitably begin to break free with renewed desperation and Bruce's relative safety will be moot. He reaches immediately for the smoke grenade inside the cuff of his shoe and takes a deep breath, holds it tight in his lungs. The detonates it. Bruce's fingers go to his waist again, something he's practiced, as he reaches for the cable fastened there. It means that he's left himself open out of necessity- because he can't effectively pin Riku to the dirt while he draws it free. He has to hold him down with the weight of his body alone, slow him by bending his knees and locking his feet around Riku's own as if he's riding a horse.]

[ The very moment that his body unsnags itself on the sharp talon of shock is the moment everything explodes into smoke around them; Riku gets a breath of it for the reflexive gasp he'd made at the sound and coughs, coughs again. It sets off a chain reaction, jerking where he's pinned to the ground, caught between the instinct to get the smoke out of his lungs and the necessity to get his head and heart around what he just thought he witnessed.

How sad. He hears that voice beyond the choking smoke, insincere and gloating, You are too late.

That rips a yell out of him, strangled, a little thready for the smother of the smoke, but no less animal and raw. He takes his grief, the great and awful hollow of despair yawning in his heart and dumps that strength into his limbs and for a moment- for one moment, Riku manages to lift Bruce's weight off his hip by the hand fisted in his shirt.

He pivots, it doesn't matter if his hip still remains caught, he twists around to knock Bruce's back into the floor. The cloud begins to clear to the flash of unmitigated rage in Riku's teal glare, eyes streaming from the stinging smoke, and it's a desperate scrabble to get his knees under him and his hands around his throat. ]

YOU!

[ He could have saved him.
He could have stopped him.
If it weren't for you, he wouldn't have lost his last best friend.

Riku is well past caring about why, when he doesn't see a future past however many minutes it takes to hurt his opponent just as deeply. He is one bent line of fury bearing down on Bruce, the toes of his boots, his knees carving shallow furrows in the dirt as he scrambles for a hold that will pin him down or throttle him, he's not picky.

Wet drops hit Bruce's jaw, briefly hot against the blood cooling on his exposed skin.

Kairi drowned.
That was her fate, some preventable and tragic accident, unfair in light of a life spent by the water.
But Sora... he could have done something.
What good was any of this if he couldn't save even one of them?

And Bruce, he doesn't stop fighting, which is why he pulls on him in one sharp yank and knocks him hard against the ground again, to rattle, to stun. ]

He was-

[ Was and that's the worst part, the finality of a word, his breath hangs up in his raw throat, a hitch. The next word is hard gravel squeezed out through his gritted teeth, the three following it are the dregs of his emptied lungs, quieter for it. ]

Everything I had left!

[Riku screams, a horrible, animalistic sound of distilled rage. Grief. Bruce recognizes it immediately because he's made this cry himself, felt it close up his throat and seal his lungs, like they'd been cauterized around the agony. It's the reason he holds onto his breath even as he prepares for the pain that's coming- the moment that Riku throws all of his body weight into a frantic jolt, as if he'd been shot through with electricity. Bruce feels it the moment he loses the advantage and saves his strength, lets his body roll. His lantern gouges over the ridge of his hip and into the small of his back, cutting through cloth and skin indiscriminately. The pain is white hot. In the scuffle his mask shifts and the bottom of it begins to lift, baring his chin and a few inches of his throat. There's no barrier then, to keep Riku's tears from reaching him. They're small brands that sear into him. Bruce loops the wire around the meat of both palms, almost invisible around the thrashing, for the way it could be seen as his attempt to dislodge Riku's grip on him.

Wait it out. Alfred tells him. Wait him out.

But the world streaks by him and his breath is hard to hold onto. The smoke distorts everything around them, an element of unreality in an already unreal place. He anchors himself with Riku, even as the other boy spirals out of control. His fingers catch in Bruce's shirt and he's slammed backwards, back into the ground. His vision blacks out, a concussion, the lantern bites into him again. The pain he can take, but his lantern will only endure so much.

Riku's voice is a furious, tortured whisper. Bruce jerks just enough that Riku will be encouraged to do it again- to draw him up and slam him back down, to try and stun him, make him stop fighting. But when he's pulled up once more, instead of pushing out at all, Bruce's arms go up, straight up over his head, then around Riku's body in one solid motion. It looks like it could be a hug. But the wire extends as he pulls down on it, pulls it tight around Riku's back and around to the front of him, where he clips it into itself- tying Riku's upper arms against his chest. Instead of waiting, Bruce slams his head forward, cracking his forehead into the bridge of Riku's nose, the space between his brows while he slams his hands forward, shoving hard at the boy's chest to widen the gap between them, to serve as momentum for the reflexive recoil.]

[ The other boy's lost track of his own lantern in his grief and rage; dislodged when they rolled around in the dirt, it lies a few feet away, its heat melting the frost that clings to the withered grass. Better that way. Had it still hung from his hip, it might have ended up sandwiched between them.

Riku could have his weapon in hand with just a thought, with it he could pin Bruce to the cold earth in as much time as it takes to fill his lungs and empty them again, there's enough fury in him to be violent, evidently.

He doesn't. That's not mercy or restraint, either.

Instead, Bruce is a kind of deterrant for only a moment, and that's when his arms go around Riku. It might seem like an embrace and that's what makes him falter. It's something Sora would've done, to reach out even if someone was trying to hurt him, because on some level he understood that they were hurting, too.

But he isn't Sora. No one can replace Sora. There's never been anyone just like him.

And then Riku feels the cable wind around him. Jerking back, Bruce's headbutt causes Riku to recoil, bleeding a hot dark streak down over his lips and chin. The shove knocks him back and Riku's boot snaps out to kick at him - his stomach, or maybe to fly right over his prone torso.

Regardless, he rolls to the side, swings back that leg and aims it again, heavily, for Bruce's ribs. ]

[Riku's weight shifts, and in the absence of sight, with his lungs stinging from the breath held inside them and the effort he has to put into protecting himself, into moving on the offensive- it's the only sure thing he can follow. There's a moment after their heads collide where he can feel Riku's body stiffen as it moves backwards, the body's reflexive attempt to protect itself. The difference between this boy and petty criminal on the streets of Gotham is that Riku doesn't go quietly. He protects his retreat by lashing out with his legs.

His arms are held tight to his body but his heel misses just enough in the first swing that it feels like a shove against Bruce's belly. The second has more force. Bruce feels the boot slam into his ribcage with furious momentum, feels the tender bone and tissue within seize in on itself, locking up tight. His mouth opens, spittle flying across the leaves; half of his air goes. His lantern clatters dangerously. There's so much blood in his face now that Bruce can't open his left eye, his vision is compromised.

There's a second kick on the way and Bruce fights the instinct within him to curl up and protect his organs. He keeps his hands loose instead- ready. So when Riku comes close enough he catches the ankle, stops the kick short and takes the force of it to his sternum, where he'll have an impressively detailed print come morning. But it's enough.

Bruce uses Riku's calf like the center of a pinwheel, his weight comes up off the ground and onto his shoulder blades until his own legs kick out, a short roundhouse that catches Riku's only remaining leg between his own and drags him back to the ground.]

[ He's caught by the ankle. At first, he thinks he's going to twist it, wrench until it finishes what his little cable started, maybe even break it. That should worry him in that brief second but it doesn't, it doesn't when Riku doesn't see anything for himself after this battle, nothing's there but whatever sharp drop he'll disappear into.

Bruce doesn't.

Instead he uses that grip to some kind of advantage and in spite of the fury and despair, he... guesses he admires this guy's ability to strategize on the fly. It's a thought that occupies that one split second when Riku grunts out when his back hits the ground and the impact knocks the breath out of him. The blood that had fallen freely from his nose, pulled by gravity, goes down the back of his throat instead. Riku coughs, still raw from the smoke.

His eyes shimmer, and when he tries to remember how to breath on the end of his cough, he blinks quickly at the image of the Seeker looking on, interested. He thinks he's looking at his masked attacker.

That makes something in his guts curdle.

With his arms pinned to his chest, he can't swing, but he calls his Keyblade into his waiting grip in some desperate, clawing need to keep fighting. This close, maybe he could even stab it into--

Riku looks down at the weapon in his hand, so startled by its altered appearance that he doesn't do anything with it, just looks at Way to Dawn, its tip broken off. Why did this appear, it should have been-

Your heart was ever destined to return to the Darkness. ]

Edited 2019-11-08 22:20 (UTC)

[He's crying.

Even through the smoke and the dirt and the leaves, despite the darkness and his mask, the clouds their breaths make, he can see it. Riku's eyes are red and his lashes stick together. There's a smear of dark blood across his bottom lip and around one nostril, his left eye is turning purple. But instead of looking back at him or even staring wildly at the cord that's wrapped around his arms and chest, he looks at something else.

Another vision, Bruce thinks. Not Sora, who he can't help but call for. Someone he feels less fond of- a reason for his pupils to widen, for the wary creases in his face. The rise and fall of his chest increases and Bruce's next thought is that he might hyperventilate, that some kind of panic is beginning to saturate. The concern isn't cut off by the blade that appears in his hand, but it is tempered. Restrained doesn't mean safe, Bruce knows this, it's a lesson he's learned the hard way and one he's reminded of again now. But before he can charge, Riku seems to freeze in place, startled by the vision.

Bruce weighs his options in rapid succession.

There are many different ways to make a person unconscious, he knows a rear chokehold would give him a few seconds, that he could hit the nose, the side of the head, or the chin and that also is likely to result in brain damage. But many of these methods also require Bruce to narrow the distance- to not just get close, but stay close. For as long as it takes. It wasn't ideal to begin with, but now Riku is armed and Bruce has, he suspects, at least one broken rib and perhaps two broken fingers.

He reaches for a narrow case along the back his belt instead; it is little more than two inches wide and inside are a pair of syringes. He thinks he will only have time for one, but also that there isn't an abundance of ketamine here. It would be ideal to save something. The decision is made. Bruce rolls towards him and raises his left arm just high enough to be level with Riku's face, to draw his eye. And he sticks him with the syringe with the other, a little too high on the thigh. That's unfortunate, it will probably sting.]

[ Only time will tell if Bruce's deliberation to choose the least potentially harmful of his options was a wasted effort; Riku's very much a danger with that weapon in his hand, even if his range of motion is heavily limited, if his attention is fraying by the distractions he sees both in his fist and somewhere beyond Bruce. It's still a weapon, and one used at close range can still maim. Even a near miss could bleed enough to put Bruce's life in jeopardy, compounded with all his other injuries.

Bruce rolls nearer and his raised arm is all Riku sees, he moves as if to counter him as naturally, as quickly as something reflexive. If he'd been just a little more in his own right mind, he might have had a small chance at recognizing the diversion. In hindsight, he'll see more evidence piling up that he's quick-witted, willing to change tact without hesitation - and can be reckless with his own safety.

Possibly a calculated risk, but the calculation weighs his own bodily integrity too lightly.

Riku flinches, because the jab is high and it stings like hell and he never saw coming what caused it; with his attack aborted by the surprise at the pain, he just shoves at him. Adrenaline makes his blood swift, his metabolism also works against him, because the shove he attempts next is clumsy as his heartbeat chases the chemical through his body. ]

You're wrong- [ He says a word, maybe it's a name, nothing from Earth, probably, as he starts to lift his arm and the weapon with it, forgetting the cable that keeps his arm caught against his torso. The weapon seems heavy enough that his arm lists back down, until it comes apart, like little gleaming pieces of ice melting on hot pavement. ] -s' not...

[ One eyelid droops and his pupils have been steadily starting to swallow up the teal around them, his arm drops and his words just come apart like so much unspooled yarn. He inhales in a gasp, like he's surprised, lets it out in his great sigh when the drug rolls right over him, cuts down all his jagged edges, flatlines the pain. ]

[It will be a very close call- Bruce knows that the moment he makes the decision to reach for the syringe, but how different is it really from the jeopardy he put himself in when he decided to pursue Riku in the first place? There's safety to be found in preparation, in the element of surprise- neither of which he'd been afforded when he caught sight of the boy sprinting into the brush. Bruce made his peace with the consequences the moment he chose to act. Choosing to prowl city streets and pursue criminals, to strengthen his body and his mind and his will had never been entirely about justice. In private moments, when no one looks directly at him, Bruce can acknowledge that it's about not wanting to see anyone else with eyes like his. About wanting one less funeral.

Riku's gaze snaps to his face as the needle connects and Bruce sees the recognition that lives there. He sees the precise moment that he understands what's happened, what's going to happen. Perhaps this is the reason that his strange blade begins to dissolve- a powerful mental redirection. Perhaps it's as simple as the chemical taking effect. Riku tries to raise his arm, says something that Bruce doesn't recognize, but like a sail without wind he begins to collapse in on himself. Fury and terror and agony wipe themselves from his expression, muscle unspools in his fingers and arms and shoulders, his pupils blow. He gasps.

It isn't a very large window of reaction time. Bruce draws the syringe away, angles the tip of it from their bodies and bears forward just in time to catch Riku's body with his own. His knees buckle, as if they've been cut out from under him, and Bruce meets him with a one armed embrace- gathering his weight against his chest and shoulder. It will be easier, after all, than hefting a prone body off of the ground, even if it also means that he can't see Riku's face, that he misses the instant that his eyes roll back.

Bruce's heart thrums hard inside his ribcage. His shirt is soaked with blood and sweat, his mask is plastered to his hairline with more of the same. Riku's lantern is a short distance away. He's in a not-insignificant amount of pain.

And it's going to be a very long walk.]

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EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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cw: oops I should probably warn for drugging 8')

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