From the moment you first set eyes on them, you've been drawn - but this is no meet-cute. Thy are beautiful, interesting...and so, so sad or angry, like a bird with clipped wings in a cage. They're a prisoner: mentally, physically, or both. Again, caged. You? You could be anyone, from an innocent bystander who happened to catch a glance in a faraway window, just a cog in the machine that keeps them trapped, to a fellow entombed creature. Even if you've never felt a thing like "compassion" before (or thought yourself incapable), you are sympathetic towards them now and your feelings only begin to grow, a fixation forming. At a certain point, you realize that you have but one option. You have to free them by any means necessary. You want to see them safe and content, more than anything in this world.
...even if they're free and don't want to be with you, that's enough. Right?
HOW TO PLAY
- Comment with your character, preferences, role, and any other information to make you more taggable.
- Reply to others.
- RNG if desired.
WHO
- Caged: You're the victim here, kept locked away.
- Passerby: Here you are, minding your own business, when - who's that? Why are they there?
- Rescuer: Whether you're a knight in shining armor type or someone simply paid or commanded to do this job, you never thought you'd fall for the one you had to rescue.
- Conflict of Interest: You're a guard, but you can't very well do your duty if you want the person you're guarding let go.
- Unknowing Villain: You had no idea your allies were keeping someone and you don't agree with their methods.
- Enemies: They did wrong by you in the past; even they don't deserve this, though.
- Should Be Reviled: Your people and theirs have never gotten along. You should hate them, yet you don't. You want to save them.
- Who's the Monster?: They're being locked away because they're a monster. No one could be further from a beast in your eyes, however.
- Never Felt Before: Usually, you're stone cold, but their plight has gotten under your skin.
- In this Together: Both of you are prisoners, so you can't easily save them, can you?
- Not All Bad: They're been told that they're being protected. You want to show them the outside world isn't so bad.
- The Better Devil: To be honest, you're not much better than their captor. Still, you're something new.
HOW
- Plot and Plan: You know busting them out won't be easy, so you'll put your mind to it.
- Sneak: It's an old-fashion escape with all the subtleties and espionage to get out undetected.
- Fight Anyone: Maybe you're more brawn than brains, or maybe you're just in a tight spot.
- Bargain: Their freedom for yours. Seems like a fair trade.
- Guilt: You can't really free them, can you? This fact tears you up inside.
- Give You Hope: You might not be able to get them out of here now, but you'll keep them looking towards the future.
- Keep You Happy: You'd do anything to see them smile again.
- Be Healthy: They're being mistreated or ill-fed. You can at least try to remedy that.
- Saved Themselves: They only needed an extra push. At the end, they pulled themself out of the pit.
- Selfish: No denying it, you freed them for selfish reasons.
- Selfless: What you want doesn't matter. Their safety and peace are paramount.
- Sacrifice: If need be, you'll put your life on the line.
- Used You: They didn't really love you. But they did know you'd be useful.
- Failure: Your attempt failed and now both of you are looking death in the eyes.
- I'll Steal You: They didn't want to leave their "home." You stole them away.
- Indebted Friends: So they weren't romantically attracted to you. They, however, did platonically bond with you.
- Finally "Together": You've wanted to touch them, hold them, kiss them, and be with them in every way possible, even if it's only for a moment. The smut option.
- Happy Endings: You're both safe, far from danger, and together.
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anonconda) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bakerstreet2014-11-29 01:13 pm
inoue orihime [BLEACH]
9, of course
no subject
no subject
More than that, it hurt. He couldn't say where it hurt, just that it did. It hurt to see her uncertinty, her fear, her loneliness. He'd found himself lingering in her room longer than was really necessary, talking to her without any purpose other than to give her someone to talk to. When he heard her crying from outside her room, something she never did in his presence, he stood and listened, unable to leave and unwilling to intrude. He didn't understand any of it. These emotions were foreign to him.
But he did understand one thing. His pain was because of her pain. He didn't want to watch her suffer, and the thought that Aizen might, probably would, dispose of her when his reason for holding her here was complete left him angry. He couldn't allow it. He didn't yet know what he would do about it, but he knew he had to do something, even if he didn't know why. And if she looked, Orihime might notice something different in his eyes when he entered her room yet again, a look of resolve, but also of confusion.
"Woman..."
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Ulquiorra. She had been surprised when he’d fallen asleep on the couch in her presence, she wonders if it was because he doesn’t see her as a threat, or maybe because he saw her as something else. He’d been staying longer and longer with her, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t classify; talking to her when it wasn’t necessary, stepping out of their relationship as prisoner and keeper. There’s something between them that she can’t name, something intangible that connects them. She only wonders if he feels the same. Then again, it could all be in her head; something made up to fill the void left in the absence of her friends. He does claim, after all, he doesn’t believe in emotions.
She’s lost in her thoughts when Ulquiorra enters the room, gaze unfocused and chin pressed to her knees. It’s only when he addresses her that she looks up, meets his eyes steadily. There is something strange written in it, the way he is looking at her now, and she wonders what he’s thinking.
“Espada-san.”
She stands, is in front of him in a few quick strides—and then stops, hesitant. Her hand goes to her chest hovering before falling back at her side, she wonders at the urge to touch him, to reach out. It occurs to her that she should be afraid, but… She isn’t. There’s a level of confusion etched into her own features as she stands before him, how she could empathize with someone who claims to have no emotions… it’s puzzling.
“I’ve already eaten, if that’s what you’re here for.”
Though she hopes it isn’t. She hopes he stays.
Falling asleep on her couch is canon, by the way.
The response was reflexive, the same he gave every time she tried calling him -san or -kun. He wasn't even sure why he bothered anymore, she always did it anyway. But it was habit by now. Just as he always watched her carefully when she approached him, so calm and fearless despite the power he held over her. He studied her expression, trying to understand...both her thoughts, and his fascination with her.
It didn't surprise him when she assumed he was here to make sure she'd eaten, but he shook his head slightly. For some reason, he was having difficulty meeting her eyes.
"Aizen-sama has left for the living world. He will soon have no more use for your abilities."
Yelena | Poison Study | M/F
Soubi Agatsuma | Loveless | OTA
Darkleer | Homestuck
6-16
[There are other things, of course, that have to be done. It's not every century that Her Imperious Condescension returns to Alternia for whatever reason and her ship really could use some upgrades. For example... a new Helmsman. Two of the rebel leaders are no more, red and olive scrubbed and bleached from the execution grounds. Two of them have been repurposed for "better" things, and such a high-ranking psionic is something that can't be wasted.]
[The installation had been done as immediately as possible; the Empress was a busy troll after all. Everything had to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Besides, that immense power was needed for some of the improvements for the ship. There'd been a lot of screaming and more than a little blood, but now the Helmsman hangs quiet in his block.]
[A lot of trolls don't tend to like being in there unless they have to, however. Unlike most Helmstrolls, the one that has been chosen by the Condesce herself seems a lot more... watchful. Intense. Maybe it's just those opaque eyes. They're hard to read because of their mutation.]
[There's been some trouble too, since the construction has started. Just small minor things. Screens not responding as quickly as they should be, temperatures not matching what the system says they are, porn ending up in people's inboxes. Such little nuisances come in spurts and rarely last long, but still. It's something to look into and apparently enough of a bother that it's finally reached the one in charge of the entire operation.]
[Someone has to check in with the main core, the Helmsblock, after all.]
hella :3
When the orders came, to come to the Flagship, to assist in engineering and troubleshooting and repairs, Darkleer had rushed to obey; after that most recent show of the empire's strength over rebellion, there had been little need for an executor, and he had been left with his thoughts and the haunting faces of the trolls he had shot.
He thinks he might feel regret-- he thinks that is what the dark, consuming hole below his stomach must be, the thing that has roiled his organs, put him off his feed and buried spurs into his bloodpusher. And there is no room for regret in the empire's machine, no need for him to even think about questioning the actions he's done, the trolls he's killed.
So the call was welcome, when it came, and the honor of being selected, not for his skill with a bow but for his talent with wires and metal and nerve, was breathlessly high; and besides those things, perhaps being buried in the heart of the empire, hands and mind busy, will banish the dead eyes of the oliveblood from his mind.]
[When he arrives, and is directed to the helmsblock, his enthusiasm wanes, slightly. Helmsmen unsettle him; while he can install them, and repair them, and do all the needed things to them, handling a-- a body that used to belong to a troll, one that breathes but whose personality is dead, unsettles him. The binary is so much better; he would bind a troll to the jut sooner than to the column, release them from their treacherous life before prolonging it without their soul attached.
He suppresses a shudder and goes where he is directed, deep within the ship, where water pools in dips in the halls or floods rooms up to his calves, or knees, or hips; this is where the Empress reigns most personally, where she spends her days, bathed in water and starlight.
With no one there to see him, Darkleer does shudder.
After what feels like hours, he finds the helmsblock, and steps inside, water sloshing around his legs; and there, he stops, because this is not putting the rebellion out of his mind at all, not when the yellowblooded companion of the heretics is strung there, arms over his head as surely as if he were in irons.]
... Oh, horsefeathers.
[In a moment of clarity, he knows why he was chosen: he has already proven himself unsympathetic to this lowblood's cause, and no one has read his mind, seen how that cause torments him now.
He wishes he were anywhere but here.]
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[It's strange, to have hundreds of thousands of eyes watching everything for every single nano second. There was a part of his mind that rebelled at it all, at first. Rebelled against everything, wanted to shut down, close down, be nothing at all. But his mind is already bifurcated, already split in two. He's already worked in shitty conditions, running white hot under a fever or with his throat dying of thirst but fingers and psionics still tapping rapidly against computer keys because he was the only one with the knowledge to keep tabs on the Empire. (Hands filled with blood cooler than his own, sweeping across his forehead, wiping the hair from his eyes, hands he'll never get to feel again-)]
[The Psiioniic adjusts quicker than any of the engineers could have expected, than they could know, because he stays quiet and lives within the system more than he lives within his own pain-riddled body. He weaves through binary, slips his fingers through so much information, and takes a vicious kind of pleasure in it. He's angry and he's bitter and he wants the fucking whole of reality to burn for it, because the alternative is despair.]
[It's a lot more comforting to be angry than it is to anguish, and he knows he'll drown quick in it if he lets it.]
[So he adjusts, quietly, doing all they ask most of the time even as he experiments and travels through the system like some sort of tourist- aimless and curious. When Darkleer steps into the ship, however, he focuses all of himself on that, hopping from camera to camera to watch every single bit of movement from the blueblood. When he sees him shudder, his physical body's mouth stretches out into a razor sharp smile full of teeth.]
[It's gone when the doors to the Helmsblock open. When the blueblood steps inside, there's no reaction as is befitting a Helmsman. At least, no immediate, no obvious reaction. The mild curse prompts something, however. Slowly, the Helmsman lifts his head and stares with his expression wiped away perfectly blank.]
[One of the nearby screens lights up. Instead of regulation informational black, there's a mangled quirk typed out all in yellow.]
0h.
1t'2 y0u.
1t'2 633n 4 l0n9 t1m3.
H0w h4v3 y0u 633n?
1'v3 633n r34lly 6u2y b31n9 4 c0mput3r.
Y0u kn0w, 4ft3r y0u MURD3R3D TH3M
[It's time to give up the ghost because frankly, he doesn't give a fuck.]
no subject
He stays facing the helmsman, his blood-pusher pumping hard and fast and scared in his chest. The-- the wetware shouldn't have been able to move, should have been dead in all but pulse and powers. Not looking at him, not with those glowing, empty eyes.
Edging around the periphery of the room, skin growing clammy and damp beneath his clothing and chilled to the bone where water sloshes around his legs, he glances at the screen, just long enough to read it-- then recoils as if burned, gaze fixing on the. The ghost. It must be a ghost, to know what torments him, to pierce him straight through like a pin through an insect and to make him fear like this.
Breathing hard and panicked, he whispers, voice harsh and too loud above the subsonic thrumming of the ship and faint lapping of water,] I was ordered to!
no subject
[Not when he was a slave, bone ragged and bloody himself, too preoccupied with saving his own skin, terrified of dying or worse but loathing living just as much. Surviving with blood on his hands and self loathing in his chest cavity like a parasite that cleared out his organs to make room for its bloated body.]
[Not when he was a rebel, adoration guiding his steps and a fierce terrifying protectiveness for the three trolls who relied on him for so much. He injured when there was no other option, killed only when their backs were to the wall, because it hurt his beloved leader to see troll blood spilled if it could be avoided. It had been a relief of his own, too, to know he had the choice to not kill.]
[But now? Now his life doesn't have any meaning, doesn't have any worth he wants protected. Now his dearly beloved is gone, now they're all gone, and you know what?]
[Fuck it. Fuck everything. Fuck the troll race, fuck the Alternian Empire, fuck the goddamn Condesce up her fucking waste chute. Everything can goddamn burn for all he cares, and he prays he fucking sees it happen so he can die under the onslaught laughing.]
[He had one good thing in his entire fucking life and they were taken from him.]
[So yeah. Reality itself can crumble to pieces. But for now? For now he'll start with the bastard whose hands are responsible for two deaths.]
[The response his words gets just draws out a sharp rasping sort of noise, something that could almost be laughter, maybe, and the Helmsman's mouth pulls back again to bare all his teeth. A smile and a threat in one simple gesture. It hurts to do but everything hurts. He can't be bothered to care anymore.]
4nd 1 th0u9ht 1 w42 2upp023d t0 63 th3 r060t!!
12 th4t 4ll y0u 4r3 th3n??
Ju2t 4 n0nf33l1n9 hunk 0f m3t4l??
D0 y0u 3v3n kn0w h0w t0 g1v3 4 fuck 460ut 4nyth1n9??
[And then the expression drops as quickly as it came.]
But p3r20n4lly??
1'd c4ll th4t 4 fuck1n9 3xcu23
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But how can he? The helmsman is right: he is weak, a coward, piloted by a desire to have some safe place where he is given orders and not left to think about the yawning blankness inside him; he is a machine that does as the empire commands, barely even a troll at all. Wouldn't a troll have felt the pity welling up inside them and spared their soulmate, instead of letting lose their arrow in a panic? A troll, a real troll, would have stayed their hand, even if it had meant going into the dark together with their soulmate, instead of being too afraid of their own death and hastening that of the one they were fated to be with.
Voice trembling and weak, he manages to ask,] What could I have done? C-climbed onto the jut beside him? Jumped b-before my own arrows? There would-- there would have been another troll to take my place. There would have been-- been a hundred trolls behind me, m-more scared of the Empire than merciful.
[He is breathing too hard, and too fast, and his head feels too light; having never hyperventilated before, he doesn't recognize it, and clings to the wall in considerable terror.]
no subject
[And for the first time, the Helmsman speaks. His voice is ragged and soft, even as much as the vastness of the helmsblock helps carry it. He hasn't spoken ever since his screams petered off during his installation, after all.]
[The look on his face seems to lessen somewhat, not stony and harsh beneath the brilliant pink of the biowiring that make up his goggles. There it is, there's that misery he's been trying so hard to escape with it grabbing for his heels.]
[They'd all known, to one extent or another, what price they would have to pay if their ideals couldn't win over the Empire. Him the most, for certain, the visions making sleep close to impossible even on the few occasions they had managed to sleep with sopor. But they'd all known. Each of them. They'd known that so many would be against them, that no place would be safe, that anything could happen at anytime...]
[But they'd still fucking tried.]
[And he hates that the troll in front of him didn't even bother with that.]
no subject
Not a spirit. Vengeful, perhaps, but no ghost; merely a... a malfunctioning helmsman.
A helmsman with mind and soul intact.
Quivering, he says, as low and quiet as he can pitch it-- no one can hear him say this-- he shouldn't even say it aloud, he might as well have climbed upon the jut if anyone heard the words--]
Braver than I, then.
[He undigs his claws from the wall, and wipes the back of it over his mouth, as if he could wipe away the words he just said. No spirit, aye, but the troll still peirced him, still found the weakness inside him in just a handful of words, as no one else had ever done. Perhaps he is that transparent, and it has only been his position that protected him-- that all others were as cowardly as him, and he had killed the only braves ones in the world...
He wipes his eyes, too, and prays that he was not crying, or that it was not seen. (He was; his throat is thick and his eyes are sore, even in the dark. He does not cry often.)
But-- but he is not here to be consumed with doubt and guilt; he was sent to fix a helmsman, and found a thinking troll. One that-- that is likely harmless, though he would not wager it. A troll whose mind survived the column could not be truly harmless, and fear shivers inside him again. This was a troll who had lived in the presence of the Empress, and hidden his mind from her.]
... You... your mind is intact?
no subject
[If it was just death, maybe he'd press harder. At the same time, maybe he wouldn't. Even he can't tell if he wants death or vengeance more.]
[As a response to the inquiry, the screen lights up once again.]
....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\...
[How's that for an answer?]
no subject
The troll is alive. No mere battery, no mindless computer, no brainwashed grub plugged in for a game-- alive, and... and remarkably feisty, and willing to reveal his consciousness to Darkleer.
Why Darkleer? Why not the Empress, why not some lowblood scrub that might be sympathetic, might free him? Had he-- had he wanted Darkleer to finish the job he had started, with his leader and his companion? Or merely overcome with wrath?
Or perhaps those alien eyes could see through Darkleer, and they saw his weakness and cowardice and pliability, saw his fears and emptiness and unspoken thoughts.
Leaning back against the wall, he wishes the floor were not so deeply covered in water; he needs to sit, to collect his thoughts, to-- to think on what he must do.]
I was sent to fix the helmsman. To... to correct the malfunctions that have been arising since you were... [He hesitates over the word, but it is correct:] installed.
[A long pause, and he whispers to the troll,] I should tell the medicullers.
[He does not move from where he is huddled against the wall.]
no subject
[But he can't see into a troll. Sorry Darkleer. This is just pure simple hatred, directed at everyone and everything... including himself.]
[The word 'install' just makes his face twist into a sneer, bright eyes narrowing. Install, install, like he's just a piece of metal and wire. With all the terror that anticipating the process had been now gone and useless, he's just pissed now. If he could vomit corrosive acid, he would, because that's how he feels everytime he hears that word.]
[But there are more pressing matters to attend to. It's not that he regrets revealing himself- there's something darkly satisfying in seeing that stoic facade he remembers from the execution crack and crumble- but he won't let himself be turned into a mindless battery. He wants to dare him to try it, he's been practicing how to pretend to not be himself for ages now...]
[But then the highblood just stands there, motionless and quiet.]
[The anger... doesn't leave. He still feels sick with it, still feels that painful gaping hole where Signless and Disciple have been taken from him, but...]
And tell them what? Expect what?
no subject
[His voice is faintly trembling again, but also faint in general, his shoulders hunched.
Before Darkleer is someone who is not an engine, someone brave and angry and-- and full of things. They were all full of things, the rebels, overflowing with them, weren't they? Hopes and ideas, ideas that weren't lost to the darkness, ideas they felt ready to share, and drat the consequences.
It makes him feel small, and weak. His voice certainly is, when he says,] I expect that would put an end to the malfunctions.
no subject
[Even in the dim lighting, the yellow blood immediately begins to pollute the water that fills so much of the block, dispersing and spreading throughout. He stares at it for a moment, face crumpled into both anger and despair.]
...Funny. Thure got a lot of blood for jutht a battery.
no subject
Haltingly, he says:]
You. Must still be a troll, then.
[And to turn him to a true battery would be murder; and Darkleer has not been ordered to cull him. In fact, all he was asked to do was stop the malfunctions.
He felt no pity for this troll, and so no panic swelled inside him; and he was not here as an executor, only as an engineer. And as an engineer, it was so much simpler to remove a bad part and replace it than to try and fix delicate workings damaged by it.
He swallows, thickly. A traitorous thought. Blasphemous, too, he has no doubt.
How would he transport such a... a part?]
no subject
[All he can do is stare for a moment, eyes wide and brow furrowed in... confusion? Mistrust? Even he can't say for sure what he's feeling. Battery, engine, Helmsman, tool, slave... It's the only thing he's heard in reference to him ever since they were captured. Even before, when he was free or when he was just a simple slave, he heard that in reference to certain breeds of psionics.]
[No one's bothered to confirm his own state of being before. Certainly no one above a certain hue.]
[...He doesn't like that it's the same troll who robbed two of his most important people of their lives. It makes something in his stomach twist.]
[So he retreats as best he can, shrinking as far as the cables will let him which isn't fucking much at all. There should be hundreds of different things he could say in return to that or just steer the conversation elsewhere but all he can think to say is-]
Yeah. I am.
no subject
He chafes his arms, trying to warm them, then nods to the troll before him.] So you are, [he confirms, though he sounds rather lost in thought. How best to do this? Could the ship fly without the Empress aboard? But that surely would be treason beyond measure-- better to do it subtly, to betray in a way that made it look not like a betrayal at all.
But if he claimed malfunction, that the helm should be replaced, then it would be replaced. Some other psionic troll, one that might be just as much stronger in will than him as this one is, would become a battery, a chilling emptiness wrapped in grey skin; he would be trading one murder for another, neither of them ones that he had been ordered to perform.
He looks at the troll, after another few moments of contemplation, and realizes that he looks confused; perhaps he ought to explain, but he can't, not really. He still tries his best.]
... I was not ordered to kill you, despite your treason. [And he is a robot, a metal thing of orders and emptiness; he can hardly follow orders he wasn't given.]
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aw ye prompt responses to things that were replied to mere minutes ago, that's my game
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