[IC Contact -- Snowblind]

[bookofnope]

[There is a click noise. It sounds as though it might be judging you.]

Comments

@Enoch, text/video attachment, night 265

[warriorscribe]

[Beckett receives a video file, rather than a call. It's accompanied by a simple text message: If Rhys is in earshot, please warn him first.

In the video itself, everything is tilted sideways; Enoch is lying down, holding his tablet up with one hand. It's difficult to tell at first glance but he's curled up tight on the floor. His eyes are red and puffy and his face blotchy from crying. His breathing is deliberately heavy, but slow, in and out through his nose in even measurements.]

All right- all right, I- [His voice breaks and his careful breathing hitches.] ...I still don't have complete control over what I say, and perhaps that's for the best right now, because I need- I need to be as much myself as I can be. I'm afraid to sleep, I'm afraid I'll wake up and be someone else again, and- and I need to do this.

I need to do this. Ugh...like my stomach is lined with broken glass...

I need to do this. I must. I must...

[He sniffs back his tears, but it takes a second more to compose himself enough to speak, and even then, his voice breaks several times.]

First of all, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for the things I said to you, Beckett, for the things I ignored. The things I didn't care about but should have. The things I did to Rhys, especially the things I did to Rhys. I could have- [He has to pause, swallowing again, as tears threaten the rest of his message once more.] I could have taken someone very important away from you.

And I don't know if you want this friendship anymore, given that. Given the way he- ...what I still do to him. But I want you to- ...If this happens again, if they twist me into someone else but, but I never come back, I want you to remember who I was. I don't want all that remains of me to be the same twisted, violated...thing it made me into.

You've made no secret of your appreciation of me, Beckett, when we talked. My forgiveness is enough, I've guided you towards empathy, everything you've said, these honors I doubt now I truly deserve... I've always been so overcome by what you say I've done for you I've never said what it is you've done for me. And I want to say these things while I still feel them. Because- one day I may not. Tomorrow I may not. And I want you to know, to remember.

[He bows his head, tucking it in towards the ball he's made on the floor, and chastises himself under his breath:] ...I can ramble around the point all night at this rate. It's all right to bring these feelings up, no matter how little I deserve to feel them. If I don't I risk never feeling them again...

Right, I- sorry, I rely on this death curse to convey the truth but it can make it just as difficult sometimes.

The thing I am most afraid of is being alone. And though I was surrounded by others, I was alone. I didn't realize it, however. I had no concept of it. I knew in some way there was a gulf between myself and those around me. The mortals I met I had to leave, and even if I didn't I would outlive them into eternity. The immortals were angelic, removed from human perspective entirely, old and already full of most of the knowledge they needed to know. But I didn't think to call this pain I felt loneliness. I didn't think to consider myself alone, you see, because I had others physically near.

[He calms noticeably - the tablet has steadied the video for him so the trembling in his hands ceasing doesn't get to be appreciated. But a tension dissolves away from him, and the corners of his mouth soften, a hint of life coming to his tired eyes.]

And then, I met you.

We're two of a kind, Beckett. The two of us were mortal-born, lived a mortal life for similar amounts of time, before gaining immortality and going on to live a similar number of years at that. A few mortal generations, enough to watch us change but not enough to forget we don't know everything. Never bereft of our desire to understand, to test and learn, fail and try again, seeking that success that will make it all worthwhile, but in a way mortals often can't afford to pursue, and in a way older immortals don't believe they need.

I didn't know how much I needed that. When I told you I'd never known anyone like you, this is what I meant. I was lonely in a way I never knew, and I- and you -...

[Bit by bit, his tight fetal position relaxes. He breathes easier, even manages a smile, high on his own emotions and clinging desperately to their warm positivity. Only one emotion can do this to his mood without fail...]

...Love. Love is what makes answers worthwhile, to me. Because the most important answers are the ones you can use to lift up the people you love. Love itself is a set of questions and answers all its own, with ever-shifting rules and no limits to what can be found.

[He pauses, taking in the abstract rambling he'd just subjected the camera to and finding something deeply comforting within its absurdity. He sighs warmly, the color in his face beginning to level out into a healthier hue. He's still clinging quite deliberately to these emotions, seeking refuge rather than free of pain. But it's working. At least for now, it's working. The stabbing agony of his guilt and loneliness and fear seem dull, for the moment.]

Yes, that's it. Love is its own sphere of questions and answers, and you are the answer to a question I didn't know how to ask. I'm not sure I can look at where I stand as both an immortal and a human the same way anymore, because of the new perspective you've brought to my life.

And thank you, thank you so much for the opportunity to experience this. Even if we were offered the opportunity to forget all the horrors of this place, you are chief among the reasons why I would decline. I could never forget you and what you mean to me.

...I strayed from what I meant to talk about, but I don't think I mind. [And at last, a laugh. It's hesitant, quiet, but fond and warm - broken, still, in its awkwardly-swallowed end, but it's real. If Beckett had heard his hysterical apology to Rhys, the contrast might be alarming. Love has always done this to him, brought comfort to him in even the worst of crises.]

But then again, perhaps I didn't. Perhaps this is the "me" I want you to remember. Yes - remember me as the man who found answers in love, and not torment, no matter what this place twists me into. Whatever you want to do with our friendship, whether you wish to have nothing to do with me after the way I treated you and Rhys or whether you want it to continue as I so fervently do, I love you, Beckett, as long as I am the man that I am. Remember that.

[It had slipped, at the mention of the idea of ending their friendship and what he had inflicted on Rhys, but when he shifts the tablet so he can end it, he's still smiling, even if it's weaker, and growing weaker still. Airing his feelings and recording and affirming who he is has given him some peace. It will not last, but it will afford him some sleep.]

voice;

[bookofnope]

Brian.

[Brian's message is the first thing he sees when he finally wakes up and is lucid enough to look at the tablet, and it is the most welcome sight he has had in many, many days. His friend's name comes out in a sigh of untold relief.]

Exactly where I was taken from, the building by the gas station. How? I haven't the faintest. I really have no bloody idea.

permatext

[0thingsonmymind]

iwill
come

[bookofnope]

Yes - please. I could do with the company. [It's testimony both to their close friendship, and to how much Beckett actually is affected by what happened, that he asks so easily.] My mind's... I can't parse it all. Not on my own.

[0thingsonmymind]

ihelp

[bookofnope]

I think so, yes. I hope you're not too far...

[They've got some new tunnels now, he understands. But first there is something else.]/small>

I should... thank you, for what you agreed to do while I was held prisoner. I can only imagine what that must have taken.

[0thingsonmymind]

iam by tow er with
beds

*You know, that tower.*

i






youare wel come

*He understood why Beckett would want that. He just would have been hoping for another revival.*

[bookofnope]

It'll take a little time to get back across. But I'm on my way. You... don't have to do anything in the meantime. If you'd rather not.

[Yeah. That tower.]

You were right all along. I made a mistake there.

[0thingsonmymind]

ican meet
be tween

*Maybe he can figure out how to get into the tunnels.

Not touching that tower comment, though. He'd rather just forget all of that.*

voice; very early morning 266

[bookofnope]

[It's very late, long past lockdown and midnight, by the time Beckett answers Manny's message. He sees it in the morning, but at that moment it overwhelms him. It gnaws at his insides all day, and aborts any attempts at sleep. Every time he stops in whatever he's doing, for all that time, he looks at it.

Part of it is that he doesn't want Manny to hear him begging again. And he knows that is exactly what it's going to be. And that is exactly what it is, when he answers. Whispered, breathless, desperate.]

What year is it? What date?

night 265; video

[bookofnope]

[It's a difficult time for all of them, night, and on this one Beckett feels like his head is about to burst from everything in it. He lies back on the bed, Rhys snoring by his feet, and watches the message - volume very low - and feels, strangely, the chaos in his own thoughts ease along with Enoch's mind as he focuses on it. He doesn't realize as much at first, but the video, the ongoing talk draws him in, as he watches the reflection unfurls. Watching an understanding come about is the closest thing, the most comfortingly close thing, he gets to reaching some sense of understanding himself.

When Enoch reaches that word - love - a part of him naturally balks, but not with mockery. There are rare moments where he has been humbled - not intellectually, but in this much more human way. This feeling that he has been given something that it is not entirely within his worth to repay. That there is someone towards which he ought to strive. For a long time, that night, he sits suffused with that feeling, weighing it, like a warm weight about his shoulders.

When he finally goes to record a response, he makes a decision out of impulse, and runs with it.]

Hello, Enoch. I... [It's a little harder than he thought it would be, to begin, and in the recording his eyes shift a little, with almost boyish shyness - he's not wearing his tinted glasses, and his eyes show their natural hazel colour, though it's hard to tell by tablet-light. The focus is tight, and he speaks low, but finally clearly.] I thought for a while about how I can answer everything you've said. Your doubts and - your conviction. And I realized I never really told you about my friend whom you remind me so much of, Anatole. And I think I should.

[It would be easy to drift a little here, with the memories, but he remains very much present, focused.] Anatole was of Clan Malkavian. The Mad Clan. It runs in the blood, the madness. His was of a religious sort. He had visions, fits, obsessions... it was hard to know where the insanity ended and true faith and prophecy begun, but it was there. He saw you, saw you whole, into and through you, saw you as God did. His gift was to change people. And he... he more than changed me. He made me.

After my Embrace I ran wild, little more than a beast. For almost half a century I cared about nothing but my instincts, my pleasures. I joined a pack of bandits no different from what my mortal self might have done, if he had even that much volition, and we did everything you suppose we did and more. But I was - it's a long story, but we wound up as blood-bound slaves in the house of a Kindred scholar. Johann James Beckett. Anatole found me there. I'd been... been learning to read. I was bad at it, it came slow. My master presented some of the others to Anatole, ones who've been making better progress. It was an accident that they came across me at practice. He told Anatole - I remember just the words - "this one's hopeless, a true animal mind. He only keeps trying because he is too stubborn to understand."

Anatole looked at me once, and left. But he and Lucita came back a fortnight later and chased off him and all his household. For me. Anatole, he took my face, forced me to look at him, put his finger on my lips - do you know the Jewish folklore about the angel who puts his fingers on the lips of the newborn? - and he told me, wake up. And I did. I became... human. Still undead, still damned, but human.

[He gives a slight, shaky exhale.] I tell you this because I want you to understand what it means when I say that you remind me of him. He was my brother and my teacher, but more than that he was the one who made me... who gave meaning to my being, my life, my death. I care about many others I've met in this town, but you... you have somehow given meaning to my being here. My survival. The possibility of an existence after two dead worlds. And I... it's beyond me to find words to express my thanks for that. I can only say that you know what I do not give lightly. I can only say - you are my Kindred, whatever that means now. I want it to mean something of this sort.

[So at last, he also smiles, more weary than calm, but just as genuine. His head drops forward slightly, shoulders sagging towards the tablet, almost like he wishes he could lean his forehead against Enoch's - which a part of him does, seeking warmth and the touch of life. He goes on speaking low, even as his eyes close.] So there it is. I think that answers any questions regarding any resentment I might told against you, or doubts about our friendship. Or at least I think I've rambled on enough to send you to sleep. We do what we can. Sleep well, Enoch.

[bookofnope]

Say where, and I will get there.

[Forget all of that, sure, but it still gets him plenty of clout to draw on. A deep, deep account.]

[0thingsonmymind]

iam try ing tofind
tun nels

very late night 265; video

[warriorscribe]

[The serenity he had found, that his affection for Beckett had given him, did not last very long, with the pain of what had happened plaguing his mind. He had some hours of peaceful sleep, but within two hours nightmares surfaced, visions of things that had happened, events crashing into one another with no room to breathe and the singularly horrifying idea I am not mine repeated in a nonsensical narrative of pure terror.

Waking from this, he fears the worst instinctively when he sees Beckett has sent him a reply. He almost doesn't open it, knowing that even though he promised his understanding, he wouldn't be able to take losing such a good friend on top of that nightmare, both sleeping and the waking one that had spawned it.

But unable to bear the fear and needing to hear Beckett's voice, he props his tablet against the legs of one of the easels to watch anyway.

His openness puts him immediately at ease in only the way one of his closest friends can. That personable shy flick of uncovered eyes, the focus in them as he speaks that helps bring his mind out of its post-nightmare racing. He still has to play it back a few times, not quite grounded enough yet to fully process it the first time.

The truth of it brings tears to his eyes, welcome joy after the day of grief before. He feels keenly the desire for contact in that final gesture, because he wants it so badly, himself. How is he supposed to respond? Were he at his friend's side, he would start with a hug (trying to substitute for the comfort of touch, he wraps Andromeda's blanket tight around his shoulders), but...no, he must open with words.

He speaks low, hoping Rhys is still asleep or in a different room as he must have been when Beckett recorded his reply, though, still sensitive to his effect on Rhys, he attaches it in a file too, like the last.]

I hope I'm not disturbing either of you. I got...more sleep than I would have, I think and...still seem to be who I was, thankfully. In any case, thank you for sharing your story with me, and - for all of the trust and-...and this high praise that came with it. I don't know how to accept it, that I've done something so vital for you... I don't know what to say - I never do, do I?

[He needed this smile. He needed this warmth blooming in his chest after the ice cold tightness for what felt like an eternity. The nightmare he'd woken from feels far away already. The listlessness that had begun to creep back in from the previous day melts away in the face of all of this, and rather than sap his strength, every word and every breath to speak them restores it.]

I can say thank you for still being my friend, after everything. ...You brought me clarity while we were in there. I forgot to thank you, when I made that recording. "I am the one who chose to stop"...without that, I wouldn't have been able to separate my true thoughts so easily when it all began to break down.

[There's a hint of pain in his smile at the raw wound that touches, almost becoming a grimace, but, paradoxically, there's a hint of a laugh starting in there too. Again, love wins over fear, and he relaxes. The laugh wins, if strained.]

You're the only one here who can do this to me, you know. When I'm talking to you, I can sometimes talk about things that cause me great pain and hardly feel it.

[Shaking his head slowly, as if in wonder, he forces his mind back on track, so his mouth can do the same. He doesn't realize it, but it's the last night he'll have to do it, the death price will wear off soon.]

In any case, I- your story, I think... Even without his sight, I think, Anatole would have seen something in you. That stubbornness, that refusal to give up, that you were even trying at all would have spoken to the existence of something more than this "animal mind" your former master thought was all you were. Yet you took his name? Was that typical of slaves wherever and whenever it was?

...Oh, I don't know if this is the place for my curiosity. If you are resting, I hope you sleep well, too, my dear friend- my kindred soul.

[There's a bit more, not intended for the message, as he leans forward, reluctantly shrugging an arm free of his blanket to save the recording.]

These are odd, aren't they...like letters, but spoken.

voice

[standing_waters]

*Ugh. He was hoping the vampire just wouldn't respond.

Inster date here. 20XX or something. Past when Beckett's world ending event happened.*

[bookofnope]

You mean - the new tunnels? The ones we escaped through? Hm... are you trying the trap doors?

voice

[bookofnope]

[If the original question had wound up his insides like a steel spring, the answer looses them all at once, and the recoil seems to slam into his heart and paralyze him for a long, long time. It's well over half an hour before he messages Manny again.]

Are you saying... that nothing happened? No mass die-offs? No risen monsters? No - nothing that you would even associate with your kind's Apocalypse?

[0thingsonmymind]

yes

house @hotstud_xxx 's map shows
where

thereis one in in dust rial ar ea

voice

[standing_waters]

*OMG, stop repling.*

Not yet.

[bookofnope]

Just... so long as you don't find yourself wandering into any more torture centers there. Keep your bearings about you.

[0thingsonmymind]

iwill be care ful

*He won't even try the door to that building. At least not anytime soon.*

you to o

voice

[bookofnope]

Not yet. But you're still expecting it to happen. You think it has to - you think -

[He's just this side of hyperventilating.]

It's 2004. Winter 2004. The ancients have risen. The Withering, the prophecies. It's all happened - happening - I swear to you it's real. It's too much for no one to have noticed. The humans were noticing. It happened.

voice

[standing_waters]

*Hm...that was interesting. Was there another version of Gaia within the multiverse? He'd assumed this was some sort of Umbral Realm...but that didn't mean that the world Beckett (or he?) came from wasn't the true Gaia.

Maybe wondering about that can take his mind of other things. He's not about to theorize with a blood sucker, though.*

It didn't in my world.

@totheark; text; Night (post lockdown) 268

[0thingsonmymind]

iam tun nels

ithink can getto
cor ner be fore
pass

soon
?to mor row?

whereare
?

[bookofnope]

[They are a little like letters, and that gives Beckett an interesting frame of reference - not unlike what Enoch has, he thinks as he listens to the message. For both of them letters are the natural state of things and this only an odd later development. But he finds that, while the video feels a bit overwhelming to watch, the sound of his friend's voice is a soothing listen in itself. Not for the first time he thinks of what it might have been like to have a recording of any other friend, the ones lost with his world. He doesn't rightly know what he'd have given to hear Anatole's voice now.

He'll take what he can get. The grace notes.]

Please don't think you need to say very much. Sooner or later, I'm going to choke on all this sincerity. [He records that with a glum smile.] I've never been good at it. But if I was able to help you pull free even a little, that's all I need to hear. That it was more than empty words. We don't get to make a difference very often here, do we? Even for each other.

[Possibly he just has a high threshold of what making a difference means. But the thought of his words, his insight, as an anchor to anyone causes unforeseen warmth in his unbeating heart. Not the first time that Enoch had given him this - the feeling that he could matter in this way. Have meaning. It all goes back to the same.

He shrugs, a little to deflate the emotion.] That said, I don't think you or any of the others are truly at risk of reverting. Or at least, no more than any of us are at risk of losing our minds at any given moment. What it found in you it could have found in anyone. We're all - well. I was going to say human, but you'll forgive me if I feel strange about it. [Another brief, weary laugh. But he suspects Enoch would know what he means.]

But I am... glad, that you see humanity in me, in the same way he did. I don't always understand it. I don't know what he did - but I know I couldn't have seen it myself. It takes a certain faith... well. As for your curiosity, I didn't take his name as much as I stole it. Initially adopting the surname was a legal matter, money and rights, but once my reputation eclipsed his it felt like vindication. [He can't help but grin slightly at this. He's recounted this story so rarely in all his centuries, and it hasn't lost its shine.] No one remembers that there has ever been another Noddist scholar named Beckett.

[Well. He's human; and hence not always a upstanding member of society.]