Lost through time and that's all I need, so much love, then one day buried

[unpocoloco]

WHO: Héctor, semi-open
WHERE: Around the Academy
WHEN: Post Hollow plot.
WHAT: Sad trauma skeleton. Not a single happy prompt in sight.
WARNINGS: Standard spoilers, possible mentions of death, murder, body horror, etc

A - [Closed to Peter]

He wakes with a gasp. His body stings with cold, weighed down with it, but he pushes immediately upward, against the lid of the freezer, scrambling for the light the breaks through on shivering limbs. The climb out is almost never graceful.

But the climb out doesn't usually feature somebody else, right there and ready for him. First his mind's got to register what he's seeing. Then, all the last few weeks come crashing back. It's enough to make him forget the ice stuck to his bones and his hair. He tries to focus on the boy.

"M-Mi-jo? Wh-what are you doing here?"

B - [Closed to Imelda]

It's not the moment he wakes, like he promised. He feels a little guilty about that, but it couldn't be helped. Still, he does show up as soon as he's able. Wearing a grey blanket like a veil. Looking around him, seeing the hall's empty for now, he reaches out with bare-boned knuckles and lets them sound upon her door.

There's a fear in him he can't push down. Maybe he dreamed it all up, tricked himself. Maybe she really did just say it to keep him calm. Maybe he'll have ruined things to the point it doesn't matter if she meant it then.

He dares to speak. "...Imelda? Are you awake?"

C - Open

He'll give it right back. He will. Not like those other times he thought he'd give something back like those backpacks or that van or Chich's femur. Definitely not like those times.

The hoodie he takes from the lost and found would probably be too small for his frame on a normal day, but it's perfect right now, when he can't bear being flesh a minute more than he's got to. He'll be alright. He always pushes through. He just needs a little more time.

The hoodie keeps him hidden, his hands can hide in (borrowed) gloves and the hood can mostly hide his head. Ducking it and wearing a scarf on the lower half of his face does the rest of the job. It's still quiet at night and he's still got the ability to go part way on his power last minute if he needs to. If he's going to keep seeing Imelda, speaking to her, he can't just hide in his dorm. He's got no choice but creep his way across the grounds through the night, only the cane revealing who it could be, but he grips it like a lifeline. Or a weapon. Sneaking up now wouldn't be the best idea.

On the other hand, any person lingering outside of the Lumiere dorm might catch him going still and abruptly turning back at the sight of them.

D- Open

He sets up on a path close to the school. It's as far as he can will himself to go. He's got no picture for the man, no piece saved he can leave. But he's got a small candle lit and he's got a bottle of cheap brandy with two glasses. He knows the man isn't coming back to drink it. Not even his ghost. But Garcie deserved more than to be killed in an alley. The dead in general deserved to be remembered.

So he sits there, in a hood and blanket on the path, facing the candle, the fencing, and the filled glass he won't touch.

"You never did tell me who Valentin was, amigo..."

E - Open

There were more than a few people he needed to see. At least a few he needed to talk to. Orihime. Ekkehardt. Maya, Minako, Tyzias. All the kids he was tutoring or generally making promises to that he couldn't keep. Gamma. He doesn't know when it became such a list but it seemed that it was now.

In at least some cases, he might have messaged those people, or even found the nerve to knock on their door. Others he might have run into by now. But for a good portion of time, he's in his room and that's where he stays, running out of things to mark and work to do and things to write. Sitting in his bones because if something, anything, touches him right now he might scream. He certainly startles to hear a knock at his door.

He gets up, walks to it, presses close, but doesn't open it. There's a pause before he calls, "Who is it? What do you want?"

Comments

[unpocoloco]

He spends a few minutes more, heaving breaths through fabric, trying to iron out the static-like fear in his head. One more gasp and he lifts his head, smoothes the sweater out, and walks back around the corner.

"Discúlpame," He says, smiling tight. "What was it we were- right, ah, I definitely do need my eyes." Dios that was a horror he hadn't even considered. "And, ah, I'm afraid that doing that other stuff would still be really very painful. For me. While not really solving much. But the... thought... is appreciated?"

He definitely doesn't sound to sure about that.

[eudaimonikos]

"If you say so," Michael replies, sounding doubtful. He figures it would solve that rotting problem real fast, for one. It sounds unpleasant and difficult to cover up; they may need to account for that in the illusion plan, if it continues.

But okay, whatever. It's not his problem. "Does the rotting hurt?"

[unpocoloco]

"Well... not exactly. It doesn't feel good but it's..." His hand twirls as he thinks. He's never had to describe or explain this part before. Either it was his primos and they knew or it was someone here who knew too much and definitely didn't want that much detail.

This would be easier if Michael had context for even basic human existence.

"I'm not usually conscious for that part. It's like, at night I'm mostly fine in whatever shape I'm in, sunrise happens and... do daemons get fevers? Or just really, really sick? And kind of weak and stuff?" That doesn't sound like a thing that happens to daemons. "Well, it just starts feeling bad and being harder to stay conscious and unless I sort of borrow my time a bit I start to... look... bad. I can push it sometimes, even for a full day, but when I lose consciousness then I'm really just the same as any dead body. Which can be unpleasant for people. So! I use the freezer. I can pass out and my corpse is left in peace. When I wake up, any issues and I can just turn to bones like this and turn back and it's all fixed again." Usually.

[eudaimonikos]

"Still think it'd be better if you were just bones all the time."

But hey, whatever, at least he knows the parameters. The dude could totally just go corpse on a plane. Michael's never been on a plane, at this point, but humans fail to observe all sorts of things. "Well, whatever. You wanna head back to the dorms or what, it's..." He checks his watch. "...getting late."

[unpocoloco]

"Yes, well," He huffs. He can't just go bones all the time. This is a world of living people and stupid, stupid rules.

He would know. He's tried the plane thing. A few times.

Of course, he's shaken from all that when Michael points out the time. "What?! Oh no. She's going to be furious. Or really, really worried." Or both. He starts forward, then stops, turning back. "You're coming with me, right?"

[eudaimonikos]

Michael shrugs and starts heading after Hector. "Sure, I don't have anything going on."

He's not necessarily sure he wants to hang out with Imelda and her weird husband - it sounds like they had plans? But he's pretty sure Hector only wants to use him to get into the building anyway. Obviously Imelda must already know he's dead.

Keeping up the illusion doesn't seem to be taking him any particular effort or concentration, anyway. He's got ages' worth of practice.

[unpocoloco]

Luckily for Michael, he's right on all counts of his assumptions here.

"Perfect!" He says, beaming again. He'll be able to get to Lumiere no problem then. As for getting back, that would be trickier, but he's sure he'll be able to work something out. Maybe Imelda would let him borrow a dress.

Speaking of, this does give him a chance to ask. "So... you and Imelda are... friends?" Considering the flowers. Gamma did warn she was sending flowers to a bunch of people and he'd insisted it wasn't his business at the time but now he's here and he's curious and it's a little less not-his-business than it was. Right?

[eudaimonikos]

Michael frowns at the path before them. He doesn't really know. People have been asking him that question a lot, about various people, and he's still not quite sure how you tell when you're friends with people. He likes Imelda fine, so he guesses he wouldn't be against being friends with her.

"Does saving somebody's life make you their friend?" he asks. "Because that's what the flowers were for. Apparently." If that gets back to her, he'll just pretend Kano told him what she said.

[unpocoloco]

He starts and blinks. "Uh. Yes?" That's kind of something that's a big deal, and on that note. "You saved her life? When did this happen? What happened?"

It's definitely kind of late to be worried but he is somewhat alarmed.

[eudaimonikos]

Michael blinks. "Does it really?" Huh. Maybe he has more friends than he thought.

It's sort of a gratifying thing to be told, even if it comes with the realization that he hasn't really done anything about it. He knows there's more to being friends than just doing something once, and he's tried to be nice to people, but - well, he didn't know it was like that already.

Caught up in these musings, he seems somewhat distracted as he replies to Hector's questions. At least, the ones he's elected to answer, since there were several. "Yeah, fished her out of a frozen pond. And then I killed a mask ghost that was there, although I don't know that it was going after her specifically." He knows it wasn't, in matter of fact. It was going for Kano. "Might've killed her just for being there, I guess."

[unpocoloco]

He gives an emphatic nod, eyes wide. At least, anyone who's saved his "life" has usually been a friend or became one. He'd be willing to maybe go into these things another time but he's definitely waiting with baited breath for Michael to give him more details about the how and when here.

"Oh. Oh, that was-- oh..." There again, that illusion of his "face" is paling as he looks ahead of them, unseeing.

He remembers now. Kano and she had sat together, soaking wet. It was the one thing to jar him out of his own shell shock over watching Sora be ripped apart, a memory he shoves back as soon as it surfaces, among others. "She and Kano were in the infirmary after. She didn't tell me she was... that they were..." He pushes a breath through his teeth. "No, it wouldn't have been after her. I'm the only one she knew who's died recently." Kano then, and that's something to turn over later, but not yet. He lifts his gaze back up from the ground to try and meet Michael's eyes. "Thank you. For saving her."

[eudaimonikos]

Michael grimaces a little. "Oh, you saw them." He'd kept Kano's name out of it deliberately. Maybe it's just a holdover from his Outland days, but the whole experience just reeks of vulnerabilities on Kano's end to him, and that's not the sort of thing he wants to go spreading around.

But Imelda probably told Hector about it anyway. She wouldn't have married somebody untrustworthy, right? "Well, I wouldn't talk to Kano about it," he warns anyway, "but no problem. She's pretty cool."

[unpocoloco]

Seemed the man had a few secrets of his own. Kano's, rather. He looks sympathetic.

"I won't let it get around. You have my word." He can understand how these things go. He certainly wouldn't want a kid to think his trust had been betrayed.

He laughs a little then, smiling wistfully down at the grown. "But yes. She's very cool." A definite understatement. Even if she definitely told him nothing. "I might tell her you said that." There's a hint of a grin now as he looks Michael's way.

[eudaimonikos]

Michael peers at Hector from the corner of his eyes for a moment, only smiling once he's certain it's a joke. "That's fine. You do that." A second-hand compliment doesn't seem like it could come back on him in any way. Maybe it's fine to say nice things about people sometimes?

Reaching the dorm, he - well, he doesn't actually have a keyfob that shows he belongs in here or anything, but he sure just lets himself in anyhow. "I set this up before classes started," he explains idly. "Kano lives here." As if that's supposed to explain why he needs to break into the building whenever he likes.

[unpocoloco]

The man's not used to Jokes is he? Well, he supposes that's understandable. He hasn't a clue what accounts for a sense of humor among daemons.

He gives Michael a curious look at the explanation though because, really, that opens up far more questions than it gave answers.

"You... are friends with Kano?" That's the only reason he could think that bit of information is relevant. Daemon or no, Michael is a teacher. it's probably fine for teachers to go where they want in a place like this. It was far weirder for him to be busting in.

[eudaimonikos]

"Yeeeah?" Michael's answer is a little hesitant. But he saved Kano's life, right? And he likes Kano. So he nods and commits. "Yeah, we're friends. I come and visit him sometimes, you know."

Actually, Michael has never once visited Kano in his dorm. He largely just lurks around; it might be some form of trying to express care. "Used to go to the student coffee bar in there, too, but now all that's kinda migrated to a real space."

[unpocoloco]

He smiles and nods his head. Kano had been a bit much for him on their first meeting but he was glad to hear the kid had friends. He should probably give the boy another chance sometime.

"Ah, I missed out on that. What with the being dead thing. I don't eat." But more the trying to respect Imelda's wishes to not exist in her general atmosphere. Something he failed at. Is currently failing.

Just as he thinks to distract himself he catches the question on his tongue and frowns. "Forgive me if this is out of line. I've never really talked with a daemon much like this. What's it like for you out here? Like, is it a thing you gotta get used to-- coffee shops and human stuff-- or one of those things where you've been around like... forever?"

[eudaimonikos]

"I've been around forever." Michael considers the question a moment longer, though, as he - well, he doesn't actually have a keyfob to get the dorm door open, but he does something to get the lock disengaged. "But living among humans is new. I used to mostly just show up when I was summoned, and leave when I was done."

It was only since the thing that happened, within the past few years, that he started spending all his time in human guise, in human civilization. "I have visited Earth before," he clarifies. "We've all done some marauding here and there. Terrorize the countryside, take out a few villages...but I gave that up ages ago. Never really my style." Wanton destruction just isn't terribly interesting.

[unpocoloco]

He nods his head at that and tries to pretend the idea of being around "forever" isn't an entirely jarring thing. He kind of wishes he caught what Michael just did for that lock but he's got his own ways.

The clarification gets a sort of nervous laugh. "That's good to know."

It doesn't rule out flaying, but hey, Michael seems like an otherwise decent guy.

"Well, you've probably got it mostly down but if you ever want tips on humans, I could help you there. You know, as thanks for this."

[eudaimonikos]

"Sure." That wasn't even poorly contractually offered! Not that it was a contract at all, really...but it's the principle of the thing. Michael smiles a little. "I'll keep that in mind."