THE PLAY OF LIGHT ON BRIGHT STONES

* I thought I was wounded to the core but I was only bruised.

[pathologized]

A multi-muse writing blog for various canon and original characters—low-activity. 21+ only. Written by M.

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Carrd.

[pathologized]

There was a stench in the alleyway. Piss, garbage, the faint rot of a dead animal… No doubt a rodent. Vinously repulsive, the stench made you grimace. A distant part of you pitied the fine craftsman who had handmade your bespoke shoes. All this loving work, only for it to touch such grime and filth. But you continued onward, heading deeper into the abyss-like dimness, isolated from the vibrant lights of the now-faraway main streets and their attractions. What a pain it was to find amenable chess pieces. To track people down. Especially when they knew how to hide themselves, when you had so magnanimously invited them to meet.

Never mind the known fact: You rarely took no for an answer.

The pitiable heels of your exquisite shoes clicked against the pavement, disturbing a shallow and transient puddle of stagnant rain. You looked up, the strange sheen of your eyes reflecting the high-above windows of dark glass—those curtain-less, light-less glimpses into uncertain voids. The building, like many nearby, was abandoned and derelict. Marked for demolition, most likely, only for bureaucracy and lack of funding to stall the process of its death. For your purposes, this was optimal. For your guest’s—well, how would you know?

You had heard whispers, gathered rumors—and still, you had no true sense of this person except that he was dangerous. Then again, was there anyone worth meeting—who wasn’t dangerous?

Slipping your left hand, daintily gloved, into an inner pocket on your jacket’s right side, you extracted a metal case, then a small lighter. There was so little light around you that the metal barely gleamed. You opened it and picked a slim cigarette. It did not cross your mind to worry whether your guest was already here, hidden somewhere within one of those window-voids, watching you with malignant eyes. So what if they were?

A flick of your wrist. The lighter made a quiet, desperate noise, which made you smile ever so subtly. The white flame stretched long and thin as you lit your cigarette with it. Inhale, exhale. The smoke, invisible, dispersed slowly. The nicotine interacted with nothing in your pristine, inhuman body.

Inhale, exhale.

“Don’t I deserve some manner of greeting?” You spoke, lightheartedly, to the silence. Then, you laughed. As if unable to help yourself. “I’m alone, as promised. Though, my subordinates are quite unhappy about it…”

@antinomos, starter call. › otto apocalypse for fyodor dostoevsky.

[pathologized]

whatever. go my starter call.

[insolot]

He recalls… a time, a different time. Different night, vision of a quarter past midnight in a distant world. At last, the staccato of death had fallen silent—the theater stood empty. Only the two remained, steeped to the last thread in blood or grief. Singing along, to the song of life. Dancing, still.

He recalls a pair of eyes piercing through the great empty, crimson, blood-drunk. Strange. Unknown; unknowable. They were staring at him, through the dark, through the hum of death, through the ghosts hanging heavy from the roof overhead; the souls that cannot, will not, escape. Never did. He remembers them so well, a moment past but ever so present…

No, no. That isn’t right. He is losing his grip.

It isn’t a half-digested paragraph penned by his failing mind. The presence that has found its way into his quarters is still there, exhaustingly so - another untended mouse scuttling around the piles of dust growing resiliently on top of pages of hectic, barely comprehensible notes. Another thing to torment him. 

Vincent looks off to the side, ashamed. 

And the Doctor is speaking to him, again. It hurts to focus. It hurts to be. His words are an alien language. It is his language, but spoken so far, far away, dampened by the humid air and so distorted by the workings of his fevered mind it has become twisted in his ears… Vincent's hair falls down onto his face like a curtain, the gaps through which he peers mere holes eaten through by a moth. The sudden touch is welcomed by a flinch — when did he get so close? — and the flinch itself followed by a raspy inhale, more akin to a whimper of a rusted machine than man. 

And once it is gone, his head follows down, down, down… 

“It should be enough …”

Vincent’s voice fights valiantly against his attempts to speak. It comes out scratchy, low and so very far from his own he can no longer recognize the sound in his mind. He wants to say much more; to scream and weep and beg. He wants to be elsewhere. He wants to be anything but alive. And none of it matters in the end.

He has lost all autonomy of his fate.

“When will it be enough?” When I, too, am a beast soothed only by the smell of death, singing still? “Oh, what more…” Oh, God, what more do you need from me?

But he cannot give his thoughts to the air — shape them into anything beyond a raggedy cough, thin frame wrecked by the effort to expel disease. It trickles out of him alongside uneven droplets of red, dripping, one by one, onto the tip of Dottore’s shoe. 

How unsightly.

[pathologized]

Ah, the poor thing is speaking nonsense again. The Doctor watches Vincent slump forward, murmuring laments for which no one else cares. Vincent is worse off than the Doctor had expected him to be—at this stage, this early into their reliably fruitful collaboration. It is a pitiful sight, one that might even spark a twinge in the Doctor's incorrigible heart. He takes off a glove and flexes his fingers, watching the creases in his palm darken, then lighten. A scalpel appears in his other hand. The silver blade gleams.

"Stay with me, now." The Doctor does not mind the blood splattering onto his shoe—worse things have stained it, after all. Tilting his head, he watches the dying man with a distant placidness. "Letting yourself go like this ... is quite selfish, is it not?" Lowering his voice, the Doctor offers one small incentive, "It would be terrible for your partner to return, only to find you dead." The incentive of hope—a cruel thing. Perhaps, a certain someone still lives. Has the Doctor seen him?

The Doctor's mouth curves, a private smile—even if he is just a little disappointed with the state of Vincent's health. The sharp edge of the scalpel rests against the center of the Doctor's bare palm. It slides across so easily. For an instant, pale flesh peaks through the slitted skin—then a viscous red surfaces, filling in the gap, beading up. The pain is nothing. "Let me help you, Vincent." The name, inflected with a tenderness so terrible, is spoken softly—somewhere between reverent and mocking.

Vincent's question hangs unanswered in the air, where it will forever remain. The answer, of course, is never—it will never be enough. Not for the Doctor, whose inquisitiveness is bottomless, insatiable. Even after Vincent becomes a beast—and he will, but not yet—there will be endless more possibilities to explore.

The Doctor bends down, until his face is level with Vincent's own. The scalpel is abandoned carelessly, clattering on the floor. Brusquely, the Doctor tilts Vincent's chin upward with his gloved hand. "Open your mouth."

[pathologized]

Farhad watches as @achroanimus approaches, half-assimilated by the curl of his smile. The answer, I'm agnostic, is boring, but Farhad knows that Makishima is bound to have more to say. Makishima is suddenly so close—close enough that if Farhad wanted to, he could reach out and slit his throat...

The knife gleams. It's no longer in Farhad's hand. When did that happen? Farhad's gaze flits away from Makishima's face, watching the apple come apart in the other's hands, piece by piece.

"No," the word feels heavy to say. "I would not say that I am religious."

The sentence feels incomplete, hanging in the air. An unspoken however lingers between the two of them, ghost-like. Losing interest in the dissected apple and the potential threat of a knife in Makishima's hands, Farhad lifts his eyes. He finds himself strangely envious—of the light dancing in Makishima's golden irises.

Each word of Makishima's monologue rattles in Farhad's head. What is beautiful about imperfection? Farhad cannot see it, has no interest in seeing it. Makishima's questions are far more cutting than Farhad's initial one, befitting of the knife still in Makishima's hands.

Farhad blinks, half-acknowledging the proffered slice of fruit with a distant indifference. Then it registers: the peculiar intimacy of the gesture, or perhaps, the sense of release that comes with being cut open—

Each question, an incision: precise, meticulous. The skin and superfluous flesh fall away; the heart is revealed.

He lowers his head in what resembles acceptance. His fingers, protected from the world by his gloves, wrap delicately around Makishima's wrist—to bring the offering to his lips. Farhad's teeth sink into the meat of the apple slice. It's sweet, sweeter than he had expected. He chews. He swallows.

"I will never be fulfilled."

Farhad's eyes gleam with hunger—red like the apple's skin. It is arrogance that fills his voice, not resignation.

"Not by this imperfect world, nor by its imperfect inhabitants... But I have no need for fulfillment. Why would I, when it is pursuit that exhilarates me?"

continued from here.

[pathologized]

Mei Changsu's smile quirks again, in that usual way of his. His attention drifts away from the brazier, lingering on @yishuns' downturned face. General Lie isn't here on Jingyan's terms, which is a small comfort, but also the beginnings of a possible headache. What would Jingyan think? What would the general report back? A sudden bout of coughs tears through Mei Changsu, convulsive and agonizing. He covers his mouth with a hand, shrinking into himself as the coughs continue—unbidden, relentless.

Between the two men, the brazier crackles nonchalantly.

Mei Changsu inhales cautiously, as though resigned to the fragility of his body. The taste of his own blood, long-familiar to him, remains in the back of his throat. A white handkerchief appears. He dabs at his mouth, carefully bunching the stained fabric together as he lowers it—so the general won't see the red splotches. His hands fold together, disappearing beneath the simple fabric of his sleeves.

"Does His Highness still have doubts?" Or is it just you? An edge to his voice, demanded by the role that Mei Changsu fulfills. His gaze flits across General Lie's face, lingering briefly, before it moves on, past the general, to stare at nothing in particular. The refined bookshelf full of books. The flowers Fei Liu had plucked. The blank walls of the room.

He shivers. He feels cold.

His attention has returned to the brazier, the flames licking at the charred wood. He turns his hands over and over, slowly, feeling the warmth inch into heat. He recalls, sharply, how it had felt to reach his hand into the flames and let it burn him. He picks up the tongs from beside the brazier, pushing at the crumbling wood pieces.

"My illness has been getting worse."

It is not the kind that gets better, is left unspoken. Wei Zheng was my Lieutenant, is left unrevealed. After a time, Mei Changsu sets the tongs aside. He doesn't bother looking at Lie Zhanying again.

"Our Lord still has a difficult road ahead of him. He needs focus, not potential distractions. He needs people he knows he can rely on. Dependable people, such as you."

His voice sounds weaker, now. Almost brittle.

"Do you understand?"

continued from here.

[pathologized]

"Well, it was either the pot or the floor." Leland stares at the pasta in the water, as if it's the most riveting thing he's ever seen. The furtive glances he casts in @vtriol's direction are disguised, albeit poorly, as part and parcel of his haplessness—in search of some other kitchenware (a colander, a ladle) that might've been misplaced. A few cabinets open and close. He pats both hands against his thighs, thinking. Finally, there's a wooden spatula in his hand.

"I thought it'd be good to make enough for leftovers, anyway."

The water bubbles, nearing boil again. Leland stirs the pot with the newfound spatula, trying to ignore the plastic one already resting beside the stove. The steam rises, warm against his face.

He clicks on the ventilation, wincing at the sudden roar of it.

"Ah, shit. I forgot to salt the water. Can you grab it for me?"

He doesn't look in Thana's direction.

continued from here.

[pathologized]

"Nonsense." Even a corpse has its uses.

The Doctor tries the door handle half-heartedly. It rattles limply, twitching against the lock. In his pocket, the key is cold and uninviting. He handles it delicately, like something fragile, his movements so subtle and gentle as he turns the key in the lock.

A click. The door opens.

The Doctor's shadow stretches into the room, his silhouette outlined by the red glow of the distant bonfires. Cold air spills inside as he finally steps over the threshold, uninterested in casting judgment upon the state of @insolot's quarters. The parcel of materials is set aside, on top of spread out papers. The Doctor lingers over them, almost reverent. Then, as if reminded of the chill—

"You should have told me that you were feeling unwell. I recall asking you if you needed any medicine, the last time I was here."

The door closes. The Doctor makes his way toward Vincent, looming over him with an ugly indifference. He bends over for a closer look at Vincent, his mask concealing the dehumanizing incisiveness of his scrutiny. His spindly hand caresses the side of Vincent's face emotionlessly, his thumb and forefinger pressing gently into the flesh to allow an examination of Vincent's pupils. Then he pulls away, without warning or care, leaving Vincent to his agony again.

"Remain seated. I should have something that will help."

continued from here.