#thevulpinewhaler

[apcryphl]

@thevulpinewhaler​ || Protector/Protectee Starters || Accepting!

“you’re going to get yourself hurt.” 

“There’s a lot of things in my line of work that’ll get me hurt,” the overseer muttered. “Everything from a gunshot wound and the likes of you to my own brothers. Being careful is second nature by now. It has to be.”

[apcryphl]

@thevulpinewhaler

//Fox: Sir, that's not answering my question.

skjd Marc’s just

 :) I know. :)))

[apcryphl]

thank you for the venom — have you ever wanted to kill someone?

Sweet Revenge || Accepting!

The man's jaw clenched behind his mask. He knew what the proper answer was, at least for an Overseer. Only the heretics needing to be put down. While that was true… there were dark moments when Marcus considered putting his blade through a Brother's gut or a bullet in their skull, the ones who delighted in the suffering of others... maybe even making the death hurt, to give them a taste of that suffering.

The thought made him burn with shame, but his mask hid any reaction but a brief hunch of shoulders.

"Hasn't everyone?"

[pallideinanis]

"I always wondered what went on in the minds of those affected by the plague. The weepers mystified me. What were their final thoughts before succumbing to the disease."

He stops in his tracks amidst the trickling Void. He should have expected Fox to ask such a question after all, considering how the whaler had quite the reputation for his lack of social talent. And yet, eyes, black as ink as they are, grow wider. Nobody asks the Outsider the difficult questions, it was always the other way around. How refreshing.

“Well, whaler, what is that people say to you when you hold a knife to their throat? Remember how they sound, how they beg, how they bargain.” The Outsider resumes walking along the precipice of cold rocky marble that had lifted to meet his feet just seconds ago. “Many weepers were in denial. Mothers, so certain their babe’s cough was because of the wet Dunwall air, unaware that they, too, had the plague and were growing ill. The more superstitious were convinced that I had lain a curse upon this city.” 

This cannot be happening. Not now, why me? Those old voices not unlike the whispers that shudder from within the heart of the Void as the realm devours at what remains of those lost spirits. “That’s why you might have found those sick with plague well past the barriers of your territory, Rudshore, the Flooded District. Many of them thought they could escape the Doom of Pandyssia by undermining quarantine rules and attempting to either will themselves better, or find a doctor bold enough to see them to get some hopeful second opinion. They couldn’t possibly have the plague -- and if they did, perhaps they could outlive it, perhaps they would not be the statistic.”

Clear as day, he can still see their muddy faces as the City Watch pushed them into the sop of the Flooded District. Streaks of red caking their cheeks and eyelids; eyes bloodshot, irises cloudy. Thin frames and skin so pale that it has grayed. 

“It affected the eyes--of course--the ears, and the lungs. The latest stage always took the brain. It would begin in the chest, but by the time the eyes started to bleed, many people were cast out of their homes and care facilities. Practitioners would fire their patients upon admitting the symptom, and as those doctors, plague-stricken, would wander the rainy streets of the Financial District, they would drive themselves mad wondering which patient had infected them, why they lied about having it. I remember how many of them had become so delusional, certain they could find a way to treat the plague, or end it, had their patient not been so cruel to make them so sick.”

“Many people, when they’d realized they’d become ill, would begin to consider suicide. Once the Lord Regent had put up those horrific walls of light, many would jump through them for a quick end -- anything to halt the pain: the fire in their lungs, the stinging sands in their eyes, and the aching of their bones. Those that would otherwise dare push through always ended up losing track of themselves in their sick. Mind rotting away into nothingness, memories of happier times long faded. I remember a man who had an affinity for taking stray animals in, but by the end, he could not recall that version of himself. All they ever came to know was pain and suffering and hopelessness. Some of them became hateful, the last ounces of their strength and energy used to spread such agony to others. Many hoped that those they knew were suffering too. Wives, cousins, friends.”

“And then... nothing. The last moments of their lives were consumed with pain and unending anguish, toiling and shuffling around as they no longer knew anything. Names, faces of loved ones, the sway of being aboard great whaling ships, or even the rotten, tinned food they’d forced themselves to consume, unknowing it would be their last meal. The only thing one could focus on, within that state, was how poor they felt. How much pain they were in. How no matter how close to the flames they came, they could not feel warmth. How they couldn’t see and oh, how their ears rang. Eventually they would all perish, cursing my name under their last breath; sometimes it was suffocation. Chest so full of fluid that they could no longer breathe. Sometimes it was starvation or dehydration, no longer having the power to care for themselves. It always started the same, and it always ended the same.”

Finally, the Outsider turns to Fox, hands as always folded neatly behind his back. A grave expression written upon alien features as blackness pours into the whaler, the Void gracing the Outsider as it always has. “Does that answer your question?”

[apcryphl]

12. What’s something that makes them laugh every single time? Be specific!

Character Building Questions || Accepting!

"There's this thing Victor does when he wants my attention (assuming drooling on my pant leg doesn't do the trick). He'll start bringing me things; a book, a dead rat, a boot. I remember one time he actually brought me my pistol."

Which felt like the hound saying You're thinking too much, let's quiet that Errant Mind and go for a patrol around the block.

[apcryphl]

@thevulpinewhaler​ || Throw a book at my muse! || Accepting!

📕 + smack

Marcus caught the moving object out of his peripheral just a second too late. The worn leather-bound book sailed through the air and bounced quite comically off the Overseer's forehead. He stumbled back a step with a bark of pain, one hand coming to his head as pale green eyes glowered towards his assailant. 

"I'd hardly call a BOOK an assassin's weapon of choice," he growled, turning only to snatch said hardcover from the floor. "And Spirit of the Deep is not fitting reading material for an Overseer, it’s on our list of heretical writings."

[apcryphl]

@thevulpinewhaler​

"Oh, definitely scare."

“Why doesn’t that surprise me.”

[pallideinanis]

1, 9, 13 for Jonas please?

[SEND]

What’s the lie your character says most often?

"...That I will sell the rings." Voice is lower than what usually graces his lips. Hazel eyes cast downwards, index and thumb meet the onyx loop around his left pointer. Tips of his fingers touch the smooth surface of the ceremonial jewelry while sight lingers on the ring around his pinky. Trimmed eyebrows remain pinched together slightly as he loses himself in distant and yet oh-so vivid memory. Jonas assumes your thinking: certainly as a victim, he would want to shed himself of any constant reminders of his murder. Yet somehow, he just can't bring himself to reject such a very real, very wounded part of himself.

Bleached old bones stained with his mark now stripped of meaning and having tempted their last mystery. Letters of his name spelled by the gothic spires of an alien moral compass scarred over and faded into the skin of followers now abandoned and jaded by his absence; the whispers of the Void snuffed out, the blue glow of its magic totally spent.

"I had known, before, that there was never much meaning to any of it. But... now." His brain threatens to unravel, the fibers of his fortitude fraying like a weak rope about to give under the weight that it tries to maintain on its own.

"...Jonas deserves meaning, too."

...

Do they give tough love or gentle love most often? Which do they prefer to receive?

"Love?..." Parroted airily, an innocent tone from the quiet teenager. The asparagus-colored hardcover closes with a gentle thump in his hands. Black brow climbs upon its companion, cocking while eyes wander up to the ceiling of the library.

"When it came to her, to N--" He falls silent nearly instantly, trapping her name within the cage of his lips. Eyes downcast, though his stare remains blank as mouth closes before he attempts to recover. He's careful in his movements, but Jonas gently hugs his book to his narrow chest. Fingers curl around the contours of the object, his grip noticeably tightening as if preparing to use the reading material as a shield or impractical hiding place. "I was selfish, but..."

Vocal chords unwavering, tone solid and strong. "But I did the right thing."

...

When do they fake a smile? How often?

"When your loved one has grown so weak that wrapping her grip around just your single finger takes an impossible amount of strength, you say nothing but you smile through humming the lullaby she used to soothe you with so long ago... You are supposed to fake a smile when father calls out your name and you are forced to leave her side even though her fever hasn't broken and she has fallen asleep and has not woken for two nights and one day."

He takes just a moment, thin lips pull into a slight curl and stretch a bit to each ear. Eyelashes flutter, blinking a growing collection of tears away before they threaten to spill. He mashes the heel of his palm into his eye, screwing into his tear duct with little grace; Adam's apple bobs in display of the thick swallow of his ever-tightening throat: the lump just won't leave him.

"You're supposed to fake a smile when the... wh-when the pain is too much..."