I am a HOAX

(re:vamp rp blog, icon and header by stevie)

[fluffygif]

[teaboot]

stop posting this kinda shit my vestigial fish brain wanna go home

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

He sighed and stood. The pack went over a shoulder and the Saint adjusted the straps.

“Exhausting,” he stated. “To answer your second question.”

(And Hoax was clever to avoid the bait. Still, it was its own kind of halfway confirmation, with the somewhat limited knowledge he had of active Regulators in Maroa.)

“I may not feel thankful in this moment, but thank you. I make for a poor patient.”

<Yeah, well.> The tired gears clicked one pace forward, and Hoax remembered that burning. Remembered old, angry humans from times long past, stories of Leviathan and sea serpents that ended with her children cleft from the living world too soon. <Saints have always been kinda shit to me so I guess I shouldn’t expect much better than that.>

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

Mercy continued packing and was careful to tuck the mirror-charm he’d taken from Vic’s car into the folds of his clothes.

“You ‘save’ brazenly for the only one of your kind.”

<Have you ever thought about talking like a normal person? What is a regular conversation with you like, huh?>

As invective as her words were, the feeling to them was exhaustion. She was gathering the strength to raise the tide and pull her bulk back into the water, where it would be easier to move, get home, and eat. That this human knew something he probably shouldn’t would sit with her for a bit, but right now it felt like bait she didn’t want to bite. Something horrible she didn’t want to know. If he knew that, then he might know it wasn’t technically true, either. Guarding her eggs was still the most important thing in all the universes.

<If you wanted to actually die for some stupid reason, go do it somewhere else. Take your weird intellectual bullshit sorta-threats with you. You were hurt, I saved you, you’re welcome. I’m gonna just think of this as, I don’t know, a trauma response or something. You’re welcome again.>

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

“Ah. Regulators think in terms of ‘wrong’ now?” Mercy mused, weary, almost to himself. The world was disorienting. It had been agony but now it was better, and the absence of suffering almost felt like a punishment. Ah… and how many times had he admonished a patient for that same thought process?

His family was dead.

(Sobering grief.)

(He reached up to touch the old, old burn that had graced his face for many years, half-expecting it to have vanished with the fresh ones, but it was still there. Was he thankful for that? Was it time to move on?)

(You never move on. You just learn to carry the weight of it.)

The Saint grimaced to quell his mind and knelt to refill his pack of the clothing he’d been cleaning. His rejuvenated eyes, which still burned with the haze of healing as though the light was too bright and stabbing to look at, flicked over the bushes Hoax had mentioned.

The sound Hoax made in response was like a backed up fountain, gargling and hacking, sputtering out water and bile. She’d tried to laugh and had instead choked. Oh, she was not feeling good at all.

<The dying guy who kicked me in the face when I saved his life was way better than this. God, you’re such a shit.> The coughing seemed to tire her out, and she settled in, pulling water in gentle waves over her body while she recovered. <Look, whatever we did to you, I can’t do shit about it. Sorry, I guess? Fuck off, for real, or try and kill me. Whatever you’re planning with your hand on your knife and your shitty eyes on your shitty holy rope thing.>

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

Mercy sheathed the blade but didn’t remove his hand from its hilt. His palm relaxed atop it instead, as provocative as the fish-breath was.

“I would prefer not to.” It was a straightforward, if noncommittal answer. He suddenly turned and trudged toward his belongings that were folded neatly at the shore.

“It creates such paperwork for them.”

<I would prefer not to.> Hoax mocked, watching him, wiggling backward into the lake very slowly. <Everyone is so ungrateful. I didn’t do anything wrong. Not even a thank you! Fucked up. What’s it called? Toxic masculinity. Humans don’t stop at making toxins, just are toxic. We’re in a toxic relationship.>

Her babble was a bit disjointed, tired and somewhat incoherent insults. She was so hungry. But his movement towards his belongings sparked a bit of recognition and warning from her. <Don’t grab that whip in the bushes until I’m gone. I hate that thing. Can’t believe that shit still exists. You suck so much.>

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

“I’m not known for my humor.”

As even-headed as he sounded, in truth, Mercy wasn’t sure how to take his sudden renewed health. He watched his hand clench and unclench with the finesse of a surgeon and the return of youthful strength. Those same fingers reached out to grip the blade Hoax offered to return it with a surety that was almost comical considering he had nearly tried to gut her.

It felt false–this health; the sudden washing away of blood. This. It felt as though today had never happened. He almost wished it hadn’t.

The grief bundled tight in his chest. At least his eyes were trained on Hoax herself–ever practical, the doctor, a detached clinician marking her weakened state. So, she had healed herself. She still did not look well.

Tired.

“Will you live?”

Other words nested on the tip of his tongue, waiting.

There was a pause. Hoax held his stare wearily, though without lids one could forgive anyone from being disconcerted. She could not emote quite the ways humans liked. A gurgling sigh washed out of her; her breath smelled like iron and fish, and she purposely let it wash over the hale and hearty human.

<If I say yes, are you going to stab me again?>

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

The agony was white-hot and searing, as though the flames that had scorched him were withdrawn in reverse. The water of the lake burned and sloughed off healing flesh and retracting bruise as suddenly, Mercy endured a snapshot of healing that in other instances would have been considered a miracle.

Tendon snapped. Flesh bloomed and receded its bloody purples and blues and blacks and the Saint crumpled to one knee after finding the ground. Mercy caught himself just in time–whether due to stubbornness or the renewed zeal of his knees.

The pain of his hyper-healed body grew and diminished like the waves that eeked around the body of the massive eel before him. He sucked in a sharp breath and felt his ribs ache by how full it was.

Slowly, he stood. With clear eyes, he stared at the weakened Regulator in front of him.

Healed. He had been healed.

For a moment, he wished they could talk about it. It was something they had in common; something that could save lives, ones more than his.

Mercy looked at the blood in the water and licked at flecked lips and then back to Hoax. Labored breaths colored the quiet.

“How do you feel?” he asked suddenly.

<Oh, he’s got jokes.>

Hoax’s voice in his head was pained mockery. The orange eye rolled to look at him as she heaved another breath, then wound her long head up and over his form. The last of the blood on her hide fell from her in watery rivulets; the wound had closed.

<Does it matter? You can’t do shit about it.> She twisted her head back and retrieved--his dropped needle. It had wedged into her coral while thrashing about, luckily causing no damage. She held it out to him, the tentacle shaking with irrepressible weakness. <Don’t leave your trash on the beach. That’s how people get hurt and sick and have to have nasty shots and their feet rot off.>

She felt sick. The whip and the healing, it had taken a lot of energy out of her. She would have to get another treatment soon. Fish wasn’t enough when someone had to be healed near death, but it would help.

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

There was something bitterly divine about a bloodied Saint fighting a serpent amid froth and foam and sin-red water that stuck, stinger-sharp, to raw, fire-licked wounds. Mercy had wept here; perhaps he would die as well, if that was the Plan, an eye for an eye, a life for a life.

He was no fighter, though he did so well, but Justice would’ve done better, and Humility, Temperance, and ____. But this Devil in Maroa had been his to handle, because suffering is cruel in that way and so is love. Mercy was old and tired and dying.

But he was still a Saint.

He felt the blessed weapon leave his hand. He heaved against the coils and, wrenching himself among them, smaller but mountainous, he freed a gilded blade from his sleeve and flashed it, blinding white, up to be driven behind the joint of the serpent’s jaw.

It was not the soul cleaver he had used on the devil, designed to break down soul-casings like acid, and that was its own mercy. He was still this.

Hoax did not care one tooth or scale for the poetic imagery, heaving like she’d forgotten how to breathe oxygen without filtering it out of the water. The cry when the knife cut into her was both audible and telepathic, miserably reproachful. This was much worse than a kick in the face.

Her blood dripped down the man’s arm. She hurt everywhere. The temptation to abandon him to his fate, or, worse, rip him apart, flared up in white-hot anger.

It would be so easy!

Her tentacles seized him about the waist, wrapped around the stabbing arm and the other, lifted him off the ground, and she shoved her healing into him. That anger was glad it would hurt, that it would itch, that her power manifested in a fast-forward of the agony of health. Her energy left her in a rush as his wounds closed, his burns receded, and his heart beat strong.

She set him down, the last of her will spent in wrenching out the knife and making sure she wouldn’t bleed out. Her breathing heaved and her long eel form twitched, but Ha! Ha ha! You fucker, I hope you’re embarrassed. I hope you’re ashamed. I hope you feel guilty and sad you stabbed me.

Maybe she shouldn’t gloat like that, but, considering the circumstances, she’d forgive herself.

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

Too close. He would not be hemmed in and corralled.

“Back!”

Waning as he was, weakened as he was, still Mercy struck out and lashed the brunt of his inlaid whip across the massive eel’s ringed body. It was not with full force, not with cracking coil, not yet, not so close, but it would hurt.

The air around the Saint sigils branded into the hilt sparked. He kicked out, moving back as best he could in the sudden froth.

Hoax let out a low sound like distressed bass reverb as the whip hit her. That hurt far more than a whip should! And with it, she felt another stutter of her control on everything. Everything important.

That whip had to go.

She struck forward like a snake while he struggled to get away, teeth and tentacles closing around him, around the whip, and tugging. The moment it was free, a toss of her head sent it flying into the bushes. Everywhere she’d touched it felt like burning, but thank the sea and brine, she was already starting to feel better with it gone. She could even help this asshole in a moment, when she’d caught her breath.

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

Mercy watched Hoax’s form writhe and contort with the same distant calculation as he might a particularly gruesome injury. His chest heaved and the burned skin of his face had started to bleed again, bruises and cuts alike reopening with all the sudden movement.

He caught his breath and blinked away the dark encroaching on his vision.

“You will not touch my mind,” he stated, fierce and ragged. “And you will not touch me without saying what–” (Breathe. Release.) “What you are doing.”

He took a step back from the eel’s convulsing, morphing figure. With a sharp, thundering snap the massive coils, like an eerie mirror of Hoax’s were brought back to his hand and caught along with the whip’s hilt. It trembled.

Hoax stopped fighting whatever weirdness had hold off her and let her full form take hold, the large eel-and-coral creature ringing Mercy as suddenly as his snapped whip. Her head rose up level with his from the flippers and she gurgled in annoyance and frustration. The tentacles around her head squirmed as she felt everything about herself--her grip on the oversoul, her powers--flicker and fight.

<ł a₥ tryi͓̽n͓̽g to h𝕖al you, you §t̾upid, dying INFAN̸͠͝T̴̀̆!>

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

Patience was not Mercy’s Virtue. Nevertheless–contrary to popular opinion, and contrary and in accordance with his profession–he tried to exercise it.

But not today. His nephew was dead and in hell and Mercy was not so far off himself.

The needle that had been taken between large, careful if nail-bloodied fingers fell to the ground and the whip that had not strayed far from his hand cracked across the shallows between them in a blow that spewed a torrent of lake water skyward. Mercy was half on his feet, visage pale and furious.

“Get your hands off me!”

As the whip came out, Hoax felt a stutter of a problem with her healing. It was that, moreso than the weapon, that made her jerk away from him in a panic. If a healing went sour, she did not know what might happen to him. Her blood burned as the energy went awry--or, no, her form was struggling to remain--was that--

Hoax hit the beach facedown with a garbled yelp as her legs became paddle-like, her lower body reverting to the eel without consistency or consent. If this had been on purpose she might laugh and make snarky comments about mermaids, but it was uncomfortable along with being comically grotesque.

“Put that a̸w̵a̸y̸ b̸͕̎e̸̟̕f̸̳̀o̴̼̚r̶̥͐e̸̬̕--” Hoax’s body suddenly lost speech with too many teeth in her mouth, but her telepathy seemed fine. ...Fine enough. <Before I hu̶̹̞͕͌̒͝rt you on acciᵈᵉⁿᵗ!>

(She’d seen that kind of weapon before, hadn’t she?)

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

The heavily injured Saint continued to hold his grip for several seconds, and it didn’t get any lighter with each that passed. The knuckles gripping the whip tightened once and audibly.

He then let go.

Mercy folded himself down onto the bank with a meticulous care that spoke of silent pain. Yes, he was in agony; yes, he knew how to deal with such feelings, and this Regulator wouldn’t be handed them on a platter. Regardless, the skin on half of his face bubbled with a searing fire that his body had not forgotten and would long remember, and cracked bone and bruising did not vanish overnight. He was only thankful his contacts were not yet here to see it.

“You would try.”

His weight heaved down and he began to retrieve what he needed to finish stitching up his hands. The small kit slid next to his lap.

“The Hoax?” he spoke up.

Hoax could make this easier on them both, explain what she was doing. But her willfully stupid and aggressively annoying persona were both habit and defiance now. If sometimes she wondered when she lost her gentleness, it wasn’t on her mind now.

Instead, she rubbed her wrist and scoffed. You would try. What did he know! Sure, she was bad at it, but she could erase a memory or two if she needed to. She bet that burn went all the way to his brain, ‘cause he was being an idiot about all of this.

“Hoax, sure! I’m very fake. Stop moving around, stupid.” She quipped, reaching out again to put her hands on his shoulders and try to get him to heal before he made it worse with whatever barbaric instruments he’d retrieved.

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

Mercy’s eyes hardened at the sudden vivid flutter of his heart and his grip tightened.

“You-”

The whip was in his other hand and he was up on his feet in the next breath.

"You’re either a fool or a Regulator to be so brazen.”

Or both. Though–this one seemed familiar, somehow; like a study under glass.

“Wow, wow.” Hoax said, watching him stand up and pull a weapon. She’d seen those before; humans liked to use them against each other. It had been a very long time, though.

Oh. He mentioned Regulators.

“Hey! You know what you’re talking about, then. Let go?” Hoax pulled on her captured wrist like a child might, completely unconcerned with this man’s bravado. Yeah, she’d healed him a little, but he was, like, old and hurt still. She’d be fine.

The human glamour dropped--no reason to keep it on, and sometimes it itched like a phantom pain--and the older human would be looking at a fishy humanoid, no less petulant, eyes no smaller behind the glasses. “Come on. I could zap your brains or whatever so just stop being so stupid about this.”

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

A passing fancy tempted him to say that it was interesting for someone of her bearing to comment on what he should do with his clothes. That was a joke Sean would make (another ache; still raw, mingling with everything else.) Mercy, instead, said nothing—nor did he acknowledge the steady approach.

That was, until his hand shot out and grabbed Hoax’s wrist. His bright eyes snapped up as surely as his whip might.

“Not dead yet,” came the cold reply.

“Hey?” Hoax barked, brow furrowing. She looked at the hand on her wrist and then back into those eyes, hers huge behind thick glasses. “I know?” Clearly he wasn’t dead yet.

What a pain! Humans were so weird about everything. Sure, she was violating a whole slew of their social norms, but she was behaving perfectly well for an eel. Sort of! When she was the only Aquovan alive, she got to set the norm, so she was, and he should appreciate that.

Anyway. His hand was on her wrist and so she could heal him, a little bit. He’d probably think it was some kind of shot of adrenaline, the way warmth trickled into his body and some of his strength came back. Hopefully, anyway! She really didn’t want to play Regulator tonight.

[thehoaxfish]

parlideldiavolo​:

Mercy’s vision had suffered, certainly, but even he could make out the figure of an irreverently rude person striding buck-naked from the lake. Several seconds of silence followed as his expression went both serene and cold.

He finished wringing his shirt as though he hadn’t heard them and folded it neatly at his side. His hands shook, fingertips raw and roughened–nerve damage, possibly permanent. The thought felt like a knife.

(His nephew stumbles and screams.)

“I imagine so.”

He didn’t need to respond, or even want to–but it gave him the chance to hear his own voice. It sounded winded but at least he wasn’t slurring. Small mercies.

The human was probably dying. He was older, and severely hurt, and he didn’t even care that she was naked and being rude. Clearly, he was halfway through death’s door.

“I hope you’re not planning on wearing those without washing them properly.” Hoax announced primly. “Lake water’s gross. Gonna crawl into all your wounds and make you all fester-y.”

Hoax had edged closer, approaching from the side as she’d crawled from the water. She was certain he’d get a little nervous, either from the weird air of anxiety she gave off ever since she’d been made a Regulator, or the fact that she was bare-skinned and humans freaked out. If he could put up a fight, maybe she didn’t have to heal him. But, yikes, he looked more and more like shit the closer she got.

“You look like you’re going to fall over.” One of her hands reached out to grab his shoulder.

[parlideldiavolo]

after the altar

Sometime after the events of have mercy.

It was done.

Mercy found that grief came in many different forms. Sometimes it could only whisper, too numbed by duty and profession to speak its weight into the world. Sometimes it was a torrent that shattered ribs and spilled across granite counters and crumpled napkins in bygone days of youth. Other times, wistful times, it was hands holding a photo album and tracing faces hazed by distance and time.

And sometimes, he found, it was a bloodied hand clutching a small, red charm.

The mirrored surface of a remote lake stretched before the wounded Saint. His body was covered in wounds and blackened by fist and flame alike, but now that flame had gone out and the world was brighter for it, he knew, as much as he recognized how cold it felt as well. 

His nephew was dead. Mercy had done what he’d come for; what he’d spent years preparing for, and yes, none of what he felt was unexpected or new.

The haggard doctor sat at the water’s edge and wrung his blooded garments clean. Each motion incurred a fresh bloom of pain and his vision was smeared by the new burn that raked across most of his face and shoulder. He would live. He could endure.

He looked at the devil charm now sitting on the pack next to him.

(It was done. It was done.)

He should throw it into the lake.

(Let it go.)

He didn’t.

[thehoaxfish]

Blood in the water.

Hoax followed the trail, weaving back and forth to plot out the direction it had dissipated from. The gentle chop of waves stirred it about, but there were patterns there that she knew by heart. The blood, too, was familiar: human.

Had someone else been stabbed? Was her lake and river suddenly about to be the dumping ground for every corpse in Maroa? Well, they’d get a nasty surprise once all their victims kept walking out to point dramatically at them in a court of law or police station or whatever humans did after they were done getting healed by her and kicking her in the face.

Soon the water became too shallow to be an eel, and so she wasn’t. She needed her glasses, anyway, and tugged them out of the cave to balance on her face that’d stay fishy until it had to break the surface.

When she did, she squinted too-orange eyes at the man on the embankment. 

“Hey!” Hoax called, with no care for how absurd her sudden appearance was. Either he was a human who knew and wouldn’t care or didn’t know and would make up reasons it made sense. Not her problem. Her problem was getting to shore without webbed feet or fingers anymore and oh, shoot, right, she needed a shirt. 

Whatever, humans skinny-dipped or something late at night, blah blah. “What happened to you?” She let that question hang a beat until it looked like he might respond and then added, “I mean, you look like shit.”

[thehoaxfish]

librarygirl​:

“Alright.”

Noemi wanted to know more, but it really wasn’t any of her business. And from what she’d heard so far, this really was beyond her.

“If there’s ever anything I can do to help, just let me know. And thank you again.”

She glanced around the cave awkwardly.

“I guess I can leave now.”

<...> The pause was palpable in Noemi’s head, an actual telepathic pause instead of dead air. Then, <...Thank you. For caring. You shouldn’t, but thank you.>

The water gently began to wrap around Noemi, careful of anything it might damage, and Hoax continued. <If you need me to heal something, please come. My warning isn’t meant to make you never visit. Just be careful who you trust. I’ve seen too many die for less.>

And, with allowance for Noemi to respond if she would like, the water took her to the shore, leaving her there safe and dry.