milliways_bar | (no subject)

(Millitimed to before Teja's re-entrance)

Yrael spent all of last night and much of today in the woods, searching for what clues he could find. There are a number of scents, some familiar, some not. There are no remaining footprints, due to the drifting snow and his own actions at the scene of the crime. But there are scents.

Just nothing he can do right at this moment. Which is giving him time to slow down and think. And feel.

He doesn't want to. It aches, the loss. He has never had a friend taken away from him in this manner. Some have left the bar for good, yes, but it was of their own choice. Teja... he was taken. Yrael doesn't do well with this foreign kind of pain.

He's currently in one of the high-backed chairs by the fireplace, gazing unseeing at the flames. He has forgotten that he still wears his new, finely tailored suit. It is rather worse for wear, still stained with dried blood and dirt from the night before.

A half-full bottle of Atlantean sits on the table at his elbow.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ganymede keeps giving the gentle scritches, taking more of the insistent weight from Yrael pushing into his hands. "It is hard to lose the people you are close to."

"I have... outlived many. Friends have left, either to return to their lives elsewhere, or go on to their final rest. That hurt more than I thought possible at the time, but this-"

It shouldn't be possible.

"I have never had someone taken from me," he says slowly. He hasn't had anyone to be taken from him in millennia. "Each hurt builds the next," he murmurs. "What are you thinking about?"

As sweet as he may be sometimes, Ganymede was raised to be a capable warrior. And he can, perhaps, help let out some of the stress the Bright Shiner undoubtedly feels.

"I am thinking of what I am going to do when I find whoever is responsible for this."

In great detail.

It keeps him from focusing on pain, instead.

"Tell me. It will take your mind away."

He'd spent the better part of a month fighting the change from mortal to not. Though in hindsight it seemed so short...

"Or make me more resolute," Yrael says, draining a glass of Atlantean as though it were water.

"The last thing I wish to do to the person who caused this is kill him. But there are many things I wish to do to him immediately beforehand."

"Resolution is not a bad thing. It is better than grieving, sadness."

He combs his fingers through Yrael's hair gently. "Did you find him? Teja?"

"Yes," Yrael says, eyes closed. "Teja, and his lover. They were together out in the woods."

"Charlie survived, at least, and will recover. I am thankful for that much."

"I have met him, once or twice." He nods with the knowledge that at least one will survive.

Ganymede's hands don't stop moving yet, but they've migrated to Yrael's shoulders. "I am glad one of them will live."

Ganymede with have to watch out for the bloodstains on the suit Yrael is still wearing. "We haven't told him about Teja yet," Yrael says, not wanting to admit that eventually, they will have to.

Ganymede has noticed them and is in the process of trying to get Yrael out of his coat. "You should shower. You have blood on you."

"I... I don't shower." Yrael says as his coat is taken, and tone enters his voice for the first time tonight.

"Water is something I neither enjoy nor need."

"Always a cat?"

Ganymede certainly can't make Yrael shower. Nor will he try, as he rubs slow, kneading circles into his shoulders and neck. "How do you get dirt off, if not with water?"

"It is one of the predispositions my imprisonment left me with, yes," he answers.

"When I change shape, it burns away."

He only nods. He would rather not be burned, and so drop that subject.

"How long had you known them?"

Yrael runs his fingers back through his hair distractedly, full of angry energy but with no way of directing it.

"Teja, I had known him over two years, nearly two and a half," and oh, that past-tense burns. "Charlie, I have known not as long, maybe a few months past a year."

"They are both very dear to me."

He's getting close enough to merely wrap an arm around Yrael's shoulders. "Do you think there is a chance he will come here again? If this was his afterlife?"

It stands to a sort of reason that if he came here once he'd do it again, given the same death to afterlife idea.

"I do not know," Yrael says, shaking his head. "I have never known a dead patron to be killed here."

"I have taken a dead patron from this place and helped to kill them elsewhere, and he did not come back."

"If they leave, are they still dead?"

"They were of the Milliways Dead, here, and continued struggling on the other side of the door, until we killed them," Yrael says, thinking vaguely of curry.

He nods, understanding the idea. "Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill him?"

The only man Ganymede could point out would be the tall, blonde, irritating one, but he won't bring him up just yet. Perhaps Yrael likes him.

"There are none that I know of, that I might be sure of," Yrael shakes his head.

It is a frustrating thing to have no reason to grasp for why a thing happens.

Ganymede only nudges Yrael over lightly. "Will you sit with me? Perhaps a different conversation will ease your worry." That and the heat is getting to where he can't hold his hands against the Bright Shiner for much longer without getting burned.

"It is not worry that grips me," Yrael says, but he does move over, allowing Ganymede room in the chair.

"Merely grief I cannot well express, and anger that has not yet found its outlet."

He slides next to Yrael. He's carving something; the bridge piece for a double aulos.

"If you wish for something to occupy your time I can give you that." Perhaps he can teach Yrael to make one that can be spelled.

(no subject)

mogget_cat - 2010-02-25 22:09 (UTC) - Expand

the_cupbearer - 2010-02-26 01:17 (UTC) - Expand