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

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

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?"

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She doesn't know why, but out of everything else that he mentioned, the reminder of how he used to defend her... It makes her smile a little. "I may not be that kinda of necromancer, but I know my way around the dead." Enough that she at least feels like she knows where to start, if nothing else.

"It's not as simple as knowing what this blight does and doesn't do for you. Someone... something? Brought you back from simply being dead. Souls don't find their own way back into their bodies, nor do they have the power to affix themselves there. If nothing else, we should find out the limits to what they did. How long it'll last. And if it can be pushed further." If they can make it so whatever brought him back mimicked true life, instead of just the illusion of it... That would be ideal. He could be alive again in all the ways that mattered.

She exhales a sigh, having to refocus on the issue at hand before she gets too far ahead of herself. "As you are right now... I can't let you go home, even if I wanted to. I can't let Coco see you like this. It would break her heart all over again to know what happened to you."

That made two of them now, didn't? She had her experience around, and he had his. But it was that big gap in the middle and he couldn't help fear that gap in knowledge might just be a pit.

But then, without doing anything, that just leaves him where he is doesn't it? That sinking feeling inside him, his daughter still so far away. Some part of him still wants to say to hell with it all, he wants to go. But he's not safe. He's not safe for her.

His hands rise up to cover his face. He takes a few steadying breaths. Just so he doesn't crack again or something. Dios, he just wants to hold his daughter...

Hands dropping, he hugs his arms to his ribs. He guesses he should tell her. At least a little.

"I'm not the only one like this. There's a bunch of us, in the outlands. We travel together, take in our own. It's safer that way. We've spent a lot of time trying to work out why us but we've never really found anything in particular that bound us together except for the fact that we all wound up in the outlands somehow at the end. Some of us... last longer than others. We don't know what makes that happen either, but we can usually tell when someone's new, when we're at the end of the line, when we're just nearing it..."

When someone's new, when we're at the end of the line, when we're just nearing it...

There is a limit, as she suspected, and something in his tone tells her that she's not going to like hearing more. But she closes her eyes, willing herself to listen... and to ask the only question that seems important right now.

"Where are you in all of that?"

He sits silent a long moment. He's got the urge to draw up his knees to his chest.

"I'm not new anymore. Like I said, we'll all different so I'm not entirely sure the timeline on all of this. It could be a while or not."

He doesn't want her to worry. He doesn't want to go into all the details of this even knowing he must, even knowing he started to for the very purpose of giving her more to work with.

"I'm a little dusty and... kind of brittle..."

He closes his eyes, letting himself just feel.

"My bones are pretty loose..."

Forcing himself to, rather.

"But my markings aren't too faded. They're still pretty bright. I can go farther. I can push this. I'm okay. There's still time."

Or he'll convince himself that much. He needs that.

"I'm thinking... I'm hoping... maybe a few more years? No less than... than two. But I'm sure I can do more."

He doesn't sound convinced.

No less than two. Put like that, it hits harder than she thought it might. That's hardly any time at all--even less when she considers that preparation will still need to be made for Nightfall. There's only so many hours in a day. But she's already determined to make the best of them.

"We'll figure something out. If two years is what we have to work with, then we'll find something before two years is up. If it's more, then that's just better for us." And if it's less... She'll have to make plans for that, too.

"In the meantime, we can work on your magical endurance. That could buy you more time... since I doubt anyone wandering in the Outlands has had a proper magical training." Otherwise, they probably would have been able to find their way back out sooner.

As far as he can tell, it doesn't throw her. He's not sure that's too surprising. She always seemed so sure, no matter the circumstances. Whether it does actually bother her, he doesn't ask.

She doesn't consider the what if. He wants to ask for some other means to see his girl at the end, in a way that won't endanger. He holds back on that too.

"Edurance?" He repeats. "Like what?" Pain endurance? He thinks he's done that. "If you mean how long I can stay awake or turn non-skeletal, I've been working on that. The longer I stay up the longer I stay down after. And the longer I try to look like that the worse it, ah, looks." But she's not wrong about the lack of training out there.

"I mean how long you can sustain your magic--so yes, how long you can sustain looking like a flesh and blood person. And perhaps, how long you can stay awake and how long you're out afterwards. If those draw from the same power, then theoretically, you could train yourself to maintain that form longer and recover faster." It's not a sure thing, but she suspects that it might be. Running himself ragged isn't quite the same as actively training those skills, just like making a mad dash isn't the same as training for a marathon.

Héctor, who has only every made mad dashes and hare brained schemes, doesn't quite catch this part.

"I don't know if it works like that. I've already been pushing this a lot-- I used to just stay like this back in the Outlands, no all night fleshy business, no two night pushes." The one thing he misses. "But I could try? I just, you know, I still gotta work here so being down for a week can be um. Inconvenient? And you really don't want to see... well there's things you don't want to see."

He'll have to really think how to pull off "training".

She gives him a long look at that. Who is the mage here, Héctor?

"Think of it like a muscle. When you're not being... fleshy then you're only using the bare minimum of your magic. Just existing doesn't build endurance. And neither does taking on more than you can manage--that only exhausts you and puts you out of commission for even longer. What you need is slow, measured, controlled practice."

That's the thing with sitting back to back; long looks don't reach him. He manages to feel scolded through the silence anyway.

"So, I ought to... practice another way?" He asks uncertainly. He's not sure how. Except... "Oh! Oh, there is this one thing I can do. I practiced a ton in the Outlands. Uh, don't freak out, okay?"

He reaches for his arm and pops it free. Just a light toss over the chair and it falls to the other side. Then hops to "stand" by the upper arm, waving.

"Ta-da," he says, weakly pleased. "Total independent control. I'm the best at it among all my primos. It's pretty handy. Heh."

This... was not at all what she meant by practice. And his trick doesn't go over nearly as well as he probably hopes.

Imelda stiffens in her chair, her grip tightening on the cup in her hands. The only sound she makes is a sharp inhale of breath, which she holds for just a few seconds too long. "That's... not exactly what I meant." At all. "Please put your arm back on."

Well she didn't freak out. Externally. That's something, probably.

He gets up, walking around the chairs with an apologetic look. His arm quivers upon the ground and the flies up back into its socket the moment he's close enough. He walks back, rolling his shoulder and adjusting with his other hand to be sure it's set right.

Sitting back down, He asks, "So, what do you mean? Because besides that I'm out of ideas."

She relaxes only a little when he retrieves his arm. She's not sure what reaction he was intending to get from that, but... She tries not to hold it against him.

"I meant, we should figure out what sort of magic you're utilizing for this, and we should train you in it properly. Work on smaller spells of the same nature so you can practice your focus without exhausting yourself every time."

She really... really looks unimpressed. It stirs a bit of nervousness in him but, in a way, it's a relief. Worrying he's annoyed her is a smaller problem for once. It takes his mind of horrors.

"Oh," He says dumbly. "Oh, that makes sense." A lot of sense. He'd never even considered anything like that. "I kind of thought that, you know, my blight and magic were the same thing. However it works. Whenever I do spells I mostly try to channel that. Take what's me and just put it out. It... does kind of... drains sometimes. But I don't really do big spells too much so I don't know if that's normal."

He still feels like the "normal" one of them sometimes, despite everything.

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

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