#michael sava

[liminal-storage]

Fictember Day 1: Just Another Night In Paradise

Prompt: Resilience Characters: Featuring Michael, one of my tabletop characters, and Daniel, a character in the same campaign belonging to @apassingshadowSetting: TSW Tabletop game/Cascade City Warnings: None

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A span of two-inch thick plywood and Michael's own rapidly waning strength stood as a flimsy bastion against the mangled, grasping blob of raw hatred and twisted teeth on the other side.

How many times had misfortune put him in this same shitty kind of scenario, now?

The Big Guys at Ye Olde Eye handed out orders, they trickled down the line, and he usually found himself saddled with the more troublesome types of recon work.

Like venturing into a national park where the plant life had become a great deal more carnivorous than he ever remembered it being.

Or combing through a storage unit belonging to someone who may or may not have been raising supernatural isopods the size of small dogs.

Or checking out a shitty, zombie-themed carnival only to be accosted by a group of Filth-infused costumes and having to flee and barricade himself and his assigned field partner behind the brittle door of a tiny maintenance closet!

Michael Sava was not an impatient man by any means. Life always enjoyed tossing him about in its tumultuous waves. A messy childhood and an unlucky adulthood had taught him to temper both his anger and his expectations.

The resultant young man was someone who, while vocal about his displeasures, did not easily break under pressure.

Still though, just because he could endure it didn't mean he wanted to. Michael was far from that kind of masochist. It would be nice if the world would throw him a bone now and again. Grunting in discomfort, he turned to look over his shoulder at Daniel, his unfortunate partner in crime.

"I sure hope you've come up with a plan by now, cause too much more of this and I'm going to tear a muscle. Or they're gonna chew the door off. Or maybe, since the universe has such a lovely, fucked up sense of humor, both of those things can happen at the same time!"

His arms strained and shook and his muscles screamed and burned in agony. Even through such pain, Michael could practically feel the eyeroll returned in his direction.

"I'm working on it!" The reply, though clipped and anxious, still managed to sound sassy.

"Can you think faster? I don't mean to be a dick but I don't think I can hold this for much longer. Unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Remember that trick we pulled in the sewers about a week ago?"

"I had almost happily forgotten, as a matter of fact. My hand still hurts!"

"There's a gas can near my left foot. Are you ready to try something really stupid?"

"No!"

Grinning in the darkness, Michael pushed against the door with all his might, fulgur light blooming along the veins of his arms as he turned to greet the hungry masses waiting outside.

[liminal-storage]

Fictember Day 4: Mental Alchemy

Prompt: Serendipity Characters: Michael Sava, Lance Marsh, Catalyna Hall @zoetic-tome, Daniel Samuelu @apassingshadowSetting: TSW Tabletop game/Cascade City Warnings: Contains non-detailed mentions of past physical violence, and also mentions of the aftermath of a fire.

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Lance Marsh always loved to talk about serendipity after a disastrous occasion. He liked to believe that, as if in some act of alchemy, one could and should take the bad from a situation and turn it into a sign of better things to come. He'd drilled that belief into Michael's head from the moment he'd been dropped off at his house at the age of twelve, only for the car's driver to never return for him.

"Kid, I know I'm funny looking and all, and you just wanna go home, but I promise you I'm going to make this into something good for you."

And he did. It was hard at times, and Michael remembered eating a lot of struggle meals as he grew into a young teen, but Lance was true to his word. By the time Michael was sixteen, he'd all but forgotten that his home had been anywhere but there. It helped that Lance was so amenable to facilitating visits with the kid's grandmother as often as possible and, barring that, paying for long-distance phone calls and allowing the occasional trip overseas to see her at home. The pain of abandonment grew into the warmth of home.

Lance was right about serendipity much later in Michael's life too.

He couldn't remember much about the incident. Only that his stupid coworker Tim had opened his stupid fucking mouth at the wrong fucking time and tugged at the edges of a wound still raw and bleeding. Michael saw red, fists flew, and next thing he knew he was sitting with an ice pack pressed to split knuckles while Lance made a phone call to keep him away from an assault charge. He couldn't keep him from losing his job at the repair shop (a matter of liability), but he'd made yet another sacrifice for his sake.

It didn't feel like there was any good to come after that. To his own eyes, Michael had lost everything; his fiancé, his job, and his sense of pride. Shame came to mingle with the loss, and he believed he'd truly hit rock bottom.

But Lance was right again.

It took time. It took hard work. It took moving out on his own. But gradually, as always, time worked its magic to heal things, and pride slowly replaced that shame as he found himself a new job and independence in Cascade. Much to his annoyance, he found himself believing in Lance's alchemy of serendipity.

Even when his roommate's foolishness and an otherworldly asshole's petty revenge cost him the symbol of his hard-earned independence and pride, Lance's smug 'I told you so' smile lived freely in his head.

Maybe he saw himself in Daniel. Maybe he understood the raw edges of his particular kind of wound all too well, and knew exactly the kind of pain it took to do such foolish things. He'd had someone kick him while he was down. He wasn't about to do the same to Daniel. Sure, they traded a few heated words; a huge chunk of what Michael had worked for was gone, and it was only a miracle that no one had been home and a neighbor had noticed the smoke in time to save everyone from a greater disaster. But like hell was he going to rip at someone else's fresh hurt.

And unlike Tim's dumb move, Daniel's foolishness hadn't been intentional. There were greater forces at play.

Maybe Lance was onto something with his belief. Maybe some good would come of this as well. Cat had invited them to stay with her until a new place was found, and her home was far nicer and more welcoming than his had ever been, despite its strange emptiness.

And maybe, just maybe, Michael was a better man than he thought himself to be.

[liminal-storage]

Fictember Day 9: Black and Red

Prompt: Sanguine Character: Michael Sava Setting: TSW Tabletop Warnings: Blood, guilt related to a mercy killing.

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Dark eyes. Dark parking lot. Dark blood.

A darkened countenance. Shadows cast by a tarp. Darkness in his mind.

Days had passed since the business with Morninglight had to be put on hold. Michael could hardly recall many of the details he and Daniel had managed to uncover with that whole ordeal. He remembered something about Bingo cola, and a few of the names of Morninglight's members, but the rest of that fateful evening was lost to him in a film of deep, deep red.

He wouldn't say he'd been having nightmares, exactly. It was more that he wasn't sleeping at all, and that exhaustion gave way to a blurring between dream and reality.

At times, he could tell his grip on reality was slipping. More than once, he'd glanced down at his hands to see them coated in blood so dark it looked black, only to blink and find them clean once more.

What he'd done was a mercy. He knew that was a fact. He'd spared the man a painful transformation, given him an out from a terrible and irreversible fate. And because he'd taken action, he'd prevented others from being infected with Filth as well. But it felt...rotten. Cold.

Luca had been right. He had in fact taken the longest, hottest shower of his life when all was said and done. He'd scrubbed himself raw, suds swirling around the drain in a cascade until he could swear the water was tinged red.

He'd stopped eating, food suddenly losing its flavor in the wake of the horrible thing he had done. He tried to force at least a few bites at mealtimes just to assuage any worry directed his way, but found it to be a monumental task.

None of it felt like...enough.

He needed to get over it. He knew that. It probably wouldn't be the last time he had to end someone before the Filth fully took hold. And if he was going to live up to his Draculesti heritage, he was going to have to put others to the metaphorical sword as well. Yet, something about seeing the humanity in that man's eyes go out, the light dying right in front of him, had broken Michael in a way he couldn't describe. He felt numb.

It was only a few nights later, when a torrential downpour hit Cascade, that he found a way to cure that numbness.

He let his feet carry him out into the rain, heavy drops soaking him to the bone and leaving him shivering. Overhead, streaks of lightning cracked across the clouds and left the air shaking in their wake. Michael wandered aimlessly, shouldering past umbrella-shielded pedestrians until he found himself at the docks. Later, he'd wonder how he managed to walk so far without getting himself into an accident or growing tired. But for the moment it felt like he needed to walk. Needed to get to the water.

He fell to his knees at the end of the nearest dock. No one was there, as most people with any measure of intelligence had retreated indoors to shelter from the violent cloudburst. Like a seal had been opened, tears burned hot in his eyes. Here, before the raging sea and sky, he shattered.

Ragged sobs tugged themselves from his chest, and he screamed to the sky until he had no voice left. And once he had no voice, he let the well of electricity within his own body run over. Bolt after bolt of searing purple lightning flew from his fingertips to join the lightshow in the sky. He let it all go until his hands and arms ached and he tapped himself nearly dry. There he sat until the rain abated and the skies cleared, the clouds having emptied themselves of their burden.

He would have to get over it. He had to put it away. This wasn't the end, not by a longshot.

He wondered if it would ever get easier.