logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: january 20-29.
content: the lanterns begin to malfunction.
warnings: body horror and psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

you'll become one

January 20th arrives the same as all the days before it. There's no great pulse of warning that throbs through the air, no ominous wind that causes the bonfire to shudder. The spirits are neither agitated nor do they hide. You could almost miss the change, if the lanterns weren't always by your side. There's no explanation that comes with the way that it's changed, but it's impossible not to worry when it's happened so suddenly.

Maybe it takes a few days, or maybe it only takes a few hours, but suddenly it isn't just the lanterns that have changed. You, yourself, have become somehow different. It's possible that you won't even have the right state of mind to wonder how long it will last. At the very least, it appears you aren't alone. All across Beacon, lanterns are changing, and changing the people with them.

Out in the distance, the lighthouse's beam has turned green.

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"Right."

He snorts and shakes his head as he braces himself against Sora, trying to prevent the other man from falling.

"Such a good friend I stabbed you..."

Beside him, the shadow reaches out to nearly touch his cheek.

He said you're a friend. Why won't you say he's yours? Do you have any friends, Hero? Truly? Is the imp your only companion?

...Why are so few people close to you?

...Is it because you don't want the lambs to know about the wolf in their midst?

Link tenses at hearing the darkness around him give voice to his anxieties.

"Shut up."

The shadow vanishes and Link looks over at Sora, realizing he'd just spoken aloud to something that only exists in his mind.

"Not you. Sorry... about everything."

Sora laughs weakly as he pulls himself back onto Link's shoulder, focuses on the road again. "If I had a penny for every time one of my friends stabbed me..."

The shut up grabs his attention, squeezes his eyes shut for a second. That. Hurt? Why would that hurt? People have told him to stop talking before. He just lets it go because he either knows there will be another time OR he doesn't care. He wonders why this moment is so different? Is it because he's holding his stomach together? That seems irrelevant.

However, the next thing Link says is very odd in context with all that. Sora looks up at Link, still trying to breathe at a normal, human speed. "... It's okay. Is someone else here? You said something about... voices."

"No, nobody's here." Link admits.

"My mind's playing mean tricks on me tonight, that's all..."

He looks sidelong at Sora, brow creasing in concern.

"Hey! Tell you what. I'll explain it to you if you don't die on me, okay? Deal?"

Tricks. Maybe that's what happened just a few seconds ago, except not with voices in his own head. Maybe just weird psychological stuff. Just stuff that he can ignore. He nods. If Link can push through his mind stuff to get them both to Aziraphale's house, he can deal, too.

And Sora will definitely grin at that. "You know, if not wanting to die was enough to keep me alive, I think I'd live forever, starting now. Deal."

That's a familiar looking cabin, but there's enough bloodloss to make the shape of it look kinda fuzzy. "Is that it?"

"I think...maybe?"

Link squints at the cabin, then looks over his shoulder. All he sees behind him is the darkness beyond the glow of his lantern and his breath materializing into mist.

"Is it? Gods, it's so dark and I don't live in town..."

He staggers closer to the structure.

Sora shakes his head. "Just knock. Maybe we can make friends with whoever's inside." This seems like a perfectly logical course of action to him.

Link gently pulls Sora up to the door and raps against it with his leather-wrapped knuckles.

"Hello?"

He steps back slightly, peering around at the windows.

"Someone help us! Please! Someone help Sora!"

Sora stands there shivering. The wound itself isn't lethal, but the bloodloss is getting to him.

"If it's Aziraphale's, he's usually home." He knows he could just use the tablet to call Aziraphale, but it's not exactly in the cards and Link seemed like he was even worse with technology than him. One problem at a time.

Link huffs and closes his eyes.

"Please, someone...," this time he whispers it to himself. Please, someone help...

The wound might not be fatal but that doesn't mean he isn't worrying himself sick over it.

"Are you able to cast another spell yet?"

The latch rattles on the door, there's a clumsy scraaaaape and something quite possibly a bit rude exclaimed on the other side before the door - finally! - swings open. With his scarf wrapped around his throat and nearly up to his nose, and what looks like a blanket draped over one arm, he looks both uncharacteristically disheveled and a little like he was trying very hard to stay warm.

The cabin feels warm enough, though. From the look on his face, Riku wasn't expecting the sight he finds on the other side of the door.

In the light of their lanterns, Riku's eyes seem to glow, reflecting that light back like molten gold. The effect is somewhat dimmed when he turns his gaze inevitably downwards at the spreading dark stain, the slash in a sweatshirt.

Riku makes this... sound, a short exhale like he's been kicked.

"Get in," The entrance leads right to the kitchen. He leaves the door open as he turns away, yanking open one drawer with one hand and then another. When he finds the tea towels and dish cloths, he grabs a fistful.

"Lie down. You," he says to Link, holding out the fistful of towels, "Put pressure on the wound."

-- Hey, bad. Sora blinks, looking up from his position at Link's shoulder, not even trying to let himself focus at this point. It'd be kind of pointless, he thinks. He stares at this big dark lumpy shape in the door, letting it slide in and out of fuzziness, and he's pretty sure he's starting to hear the same voices again, because that is most certainly not the person he thinks the voice belongs to. Or, at least, it shouldn't be.

He gets colder than he realizes he could, starts to shiver as the blood drains even more quickly from his face. It shouldn't be him. He doesn't want it to be that voice. At least, not yet. He's not ready.

"Link," he manages to get out urgently, but doesn't really have the blood he needs to protest from both situations combined. He tries to add that this isn't too bad, actually, that they can leave right now and maybe get a couple of bandaids and a juicebox from the general store and he'll be just fine, but a wave of nausea kicks him in the back of his knees and he sinks again. He leans heavily into Link and won't be able to move under his own steam anymore. The couch it is, or wherever Riku needs him to be. At least it's warm.

Link leads Sora over to Riku. He detects a bit of resistance from the man hanging off his shoulder but pushes forward anyway. If there's animosity between Sora and the silver haired man he'll have to add it to his long list of things to apologize for later.

Once Sora is settled, Link turns to leave but is interrupted by the fistful towels being held out in his direction.

"Oh. Ah, yes."

He'll take the cloth and walk back to Sora's side to press against the wound.

Once Link has settled his bleeding ward down, Riku backtracks to the door, shutting it securely so no more of the precious warmth in the tiny cabin can escape. The couch can do, it's less easy to clean than the kitchen floor, but it's more comfortable. Besides, Quentin is a magician, and Riku... well, he's a glorified MP battery.

But what's this guy's deal? Making Link do all the work? He's got hands, doesn't he? The truth is, he can't, not with what's left of his other arm under that blanket draped over his shoulders, not with the lantern tucked underneath it. It's all in some vain attempt to conceal his ailment, even though there's so many who are also suffering, there are habits Riku finds hard to break. The slitted pupils, the reflective irises that shine in the lantern-light are bad enough. They remind him too much of...

Past mistakes. Riku heads briskly into the kitchen and pulls open the refrigerator, grabs the pitcher, a cup from the cupboard. Fresh juice can be tough to come by, but that doesn't matter, he grabs the bottle and pours its contents into the tall glass. Apple. It's a lot for how sweet it is, but if that pale appearance is any indicator, the boy with Sora's memories might need it. He considers a call to Miss Lutece. Is her artificial blood transfusion stuff operational yet? Does he even know this guy's blood type? Unlikely...

"What happened?" he says, returning.

Sora does his best to move with Link and not be more than a glorified bloodless meatsack, but his bones are jelly right now. Rolling into the couch is a relief. He makes a useless attempt to keep holding his sweatshirt to the wound, but when he realizes that he's actually squeezing more blood onto the couch, he gives up and lets Link have at. He's not sure how much of a difference that was making anyway.

He suddenly remembers what Link asked at the door, checks his reserves again. Not yet. Probably something to do with the blood loss making the regeneration process slower. Probably. Maybe? If Merlin or Donald ever told him anything like that, it hasn't come back yet. Stupid.

"Just need a minute. A minute to." He just needs a little extra time to get that spell out, close the wound a little more. His eyes are closed as he tries to breathe normally. It's almost like he's floating in a neutral space, and the thing that Riku's voice says when his footsteps get closer could just be another echo, another memory from another life. It's fine, actually.

Link gently presses the cloth against the wound. If Sora hadn't known healing magic, what might have happened?

Out of the corner of his eyes he sees the shadow appear again, lying across the backrest of the couch.

He would have died and you would have become a slayer of men.

Link pinches at his nose and shakes his head, feeling the thin blade of his concentration start to snap. Throughout the room, he watches the light bending as if it were moving through a dark prism.

What would have happened if he didn't know healing magic?

What DID happen?

Can you say? Would you?

What happened?

The question seems to come from all around him and he sneers at the shadow only to watch it vanish. When the light of the lanterns in the room shimmer and return to normal he realizes that the question hadn't come from inside his head, but from the silver haired man. What happened?

"An accident."

He opens his mouth to say more but the words never come.

That's both a lot of blood and a heck of a guilty expression to sum up in a single word. It's probably not the most reassuring reaction, either, when Riku's visible hand closes around a shimmer in the air that crystallizes into the weighty shape of a weapon; it looks... kind of like a broadsword, but blunter, with strange grooves in the metal. It swings up, just shy of brushing the beams up above.

"Heal!"

Unfortunately, his curative magic has been altered by either his death or just the way magic seems to work in this place. It won't do enough to help internal bleeding, which is what ultimately did Five in, all those months ago when they got the Lighthouse hooked up with the network.

The spell sheds no light, but there's a glow of green and yellow blossoming like a flower in the air above the injury, a drop of condensed magic descending on it. For all of its limitations, perhaps it will potentially stem the external bleeding, at least. Riku hopes that's all there is.

"Check him," Riku demands, his voice neutral and his fist tight around the handle of his Keyblade, "And start explaining. Be specific. It's important."

He's not sure if it's just his ears rushing with too little blood or the fact that Link might be hearing things again, but the stilted reply is worrying. The Cure spell is familiar, at least; his eyes flutter open as it hits, completely comfortable with the green seeping into him.

Oh hey, here's something he never wanted to do in front of Riku again. That strange blunt sword he has? Dante never got it back, or was enough of a cagey jerk to keep the thing to himself until it was too late. Sora's eyes roll toward it, focus, and freeze, unmoving, his breathing slipping out of conscious control as he experiences another echo, his brain flooding again. It's a dark world he's seen before, he's speeding toward Riku and the King and that woman with blue hair, that's her, that's Aqua-

He comes back, but he's never had a memory echo during an injury this bad. There's no hiding this one. The four second loss of consciousness had apparently been enough to make him start hyperventilating. Spots appear on his vision right before he squeezes them back shut and holds his breath, desperately trying to get his lungs under control. Sorry, Link! Echoes are usually not this bad! Sora will be back to confirm his story in just a moment.

Edited (phrasing) 2020-01-24 12:05 (UTC)

"SORA!"

Link shouts as the young man lapses out of consciousness. Maybe the wound was worse than they thought.

He grits his teeth and his gaze snaps towards Riku. This is no time for guilt. Guilt can wait.

"Something happened. I was seeing things. I thought he was attacking me so I-- I counter attacked. Stabbed him with a sword. The one my back."

Quickly, his gaze shifts back to Sora.

"I'm seeing and hearing things that aren't there... He knocked me flat, though, with a spell. It knocked the demon outta me too. I mean...mostly."

The lantern hanging from his belt still has a green glow swirling around within it, but it's not the intense light it had been when he'd attacked Sora.

His shout drags Riku's gaze back to the couch and the boy on it. He's already pale from half a year in the dark, if not for the ruddy glow of his cracked lantern, the way the color flies from his face would be more conspicuous. The bottom of his stomach drops out.

It's the same feeling every time he would dream of the boathouse or walk by the shore where it used to be only to see a shape lying supine on the beach, knowing before his lantern's light even falls on it that it would have Kairi's face, that she would be gazing sightlessly out at him or the sky, that her mouth would be full of lake water and she wouldn't really be there.

The same shocky sweep of nausea and then it gets lost somewhere on its way to his throat, he stands there, but he doesn't feel like he's standing there. All of this is happening to someone else, somewhere else. This can be useful in the moment, when he needs to focus and observe and take action without hesitation, but the experience always makes him feel depleted, like he's tipped the balance too far to the dark.

"Did this start when your lantern changed? Is it always green?" sounds like a strangely calm line of questioning when there's a bloodied boy hyperventilating on his couch; Riku can see he's trying to hold it together, crowding the boy wouldn't help him regain control.

A lesson he'd learned in first aid on how to ground a panicking camper: four, seven, eight. He figured he had the four a little too well covered, and he kept it in past the seven until he remembered how he - Skyler - had actually stopped to listen to the Red Cross employee all those years ago. Something about wanting to do the job right, if he had to do it. It had seemed important.

He counts up to eight as he lets go of the breath, mentally chastising himself to breathe in for four, to remember to do that. What use is training if you forget it when it counts?

He cycles through the numbers until he's back in the present, resurfacing just in time to catch Riku asking about whether a lantern had always been green. The lanterns. He remembers something about that. He needs to contribute. Hold, six, seven.

"Rosinante," he says, surprising himself. He opens his eyes and this time looks down at Link's hand, using that information to ground himself before shutting them again. Not willing to risk another echo here. "His lantern was weird. Cracked. Like he dropped it."

He has so many things to add to that observation, plus another question about magic and keyblades that might trigger another echo but he has to know. It's not the topic now, though, and his eight second allotment of breath was through. He also doesn't want to summon his own weapon when Link is so close and he doesn't know where his hands are. (He'd dismissed his own keyblade at some point, hadn't he? Somewhere on the walk between the bonfire and the village. He can't remember that happening.)

Anyway, he doesn't want to poke Link's eye out by accident. That'd make things way worse than they are now. He'll keep breathing with his eyes closed, counting, trying to find his hands mentally. He's not sure if that's a grounding thing, but it's something he can do.

Link watches Sora as he speaks, then looks up again, at Riku.

"It's usually a golden light," he says.

"But it lit up in uhm, almost the same color as my tunic. That's when this started, yeah."

It isn't.

The darkness around the ceiling seems to speak voiceless words that blossom into anxiety inside his head.

You were mad long before this. The lanterns are just drawing it out.

Link pinches his nose again.

"Is it the lanterns doing this? Does this happen a lot?"

Rosinante is a good source, reliable. He seems to be getting his breathing under control, too. That's good. Riku considers what he said, about the lantern looking cracked, like it had been dropped, and his pale lashes drop low over eyes that cut away from the two of them and down to his own lantern.

It hangs from his hip, but that's the same side as the blanket he's draped over what's become of his left arm. The lantern still paints a jagged, ruddy light on the floor underneath it, and he's careful not to try closing his hand protectively around his. His hand is in no condition to go handling anything, least of all his own lifeline.

"No," he admits, "This is new. And it's happening to the lighthouse, too. It's Robin's lantern... if she's hallucinating the way you said you are, if it's bad enough that you'd wound someone else like this..."

He feels cold.

Already, he's thinking about who is vulnerable, potential bolt holes, how long they could expect to last. How to address all the lost blood. Maybe Ms. Lutece knows his blood type-

"Make sure the wound's closed," says Riku, dismissing his Keyblade and turning to take the glass off the counter. He's soon coming back with the juice. Stooping suddenly to set the glass of juice within reach from the couch, he adds, "I need to send a few messages. You've lost a lot of blood. Drink. Don't move too much. Be careful."

In, out. In, out. He's still cold, the skin on his hands washing in and out of iciness under a thin dry layer of blood, but he thinks he's almost to a point where he'll either stop thinking about breathing or he'll pass out. In a good way. If there's a good way to pass out? He'll find it if it exists.

Wildly, weirdly, Riku bringing up Robin and the lighthouse makes him smile a little, even in a situation as dire as this one. With Link so close, he's reminded of the hour they spent sitting on Aziraphale's bathroom floor, talking about the bonfire and giant Robin who lived in the lake because obviously people scaled with their lanterns, and Link almost concussing himself on the edge of the bathtub, and Sora dunking his tablet in the sink just to see what would happen. It had fried. It was really funny. The hallucinations were less so, but at least no one else was hurt. That's something to feel good about.

He'll nod at Riku, or at least he hopes he does. His eyes are still closed, he can't really aim the nodding. He'll open an eye again, picking out Link's ears in the green light. (Green? Is that what they'd been talking about?)

Sora breathes out. He doesn't need to count anymore. Step one. "Hey, bro. Watch your head," he says softly.

Without looking, and because it seems like the least obstructive place to summon it, Sora will reach up from the couch, feeling around until the Kingdom Key forms in his hand. He pauses, then closes his eyes. "Heal." The same green spectral leaves curl around him, soaking into his skin and dying away. It's still throbbing, probably still open, and he's still very weak, but he could close his eyes and imagine that it was just a really, incredibly bad stomachache.

He lets his weapon fade away. No need to keep it around if he's here.

Drink? Drink what? Sora looks down at Link, trying to move despite what Riku said. Did he leave something? "Link, how are you feeling?"

Link ducks his head slightly and feels the strangely shaped blade brush against his ear tip.

"Don't worry about me. I'm fine."

While "fine" is a word that, in the Link Lexicon, usually means "I'm bleeding internally but don't want to worry you" he actually is feeling perfectly fine right now. Physically, at least.

Mentally is more complicated. There is a darkness all around, still whispering his own worse thoughts into his mind. He doesn't mention this because, well, he doesn't want to worry anyone.

"Here."

Link reaches past Sora's head for the drink Riku had set down and gently hands it over.

Seeing the boy summon that familiar Keyblade and call on the same magic slams Riku back into himself with all the mercy of a dull guillotine, a dissonant note that kicks a hole in the wall Riku's been trying to keep up around the parts that are still heartsick over the people he's had to bury.

Because those things are Sora's when a lot of other things aren't.

Not much happens on the outside. Link gets it. He's someone who has to stuff down the things he's feeling because what he's needed for doesn't leave room for being a person with a heart to break. A whole kingdom needs their legendary hero to be strong all the time, it's not something a guy like Link can switch on and off, is it?

But it does make Riku's typing on the network sloppy, it makes him a little more harried when he tries to solicit help to make up for all the things he personally lacks. Eventually, he gets what he hopes will work, he doesn't turn back around, cradling his tablet in his bestial arm, trying to keep that hidden. There's enough alarming going on.

"A doctor is coming. Lie still," he warns, adding, after a lengthy pause, "Please."

EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

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in about five minutes i'm about to hit up the discord to see if some rando with a cabin is free LOL

Sorry, In the Night community

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