fou nd you forever [open to multiple]

[postictal]

[tw: weird formatting, dissociation]

When did they last - ?

They cannot remember. This body has not been theirs in so long.

w     e  w  i ll wait for you no more                              

It is theirs again. They have slid the familiar pale disc of their face to shroud the one belonging to the skin they wear, wrapped in their old, familiar mantle. There was a window, and they climbed out of it. They are awake for the first time in -

control is being ta  ke n away from y  o   u                                                                      

No matter.

They do not exist in that limbo of chemical suppression, not any longer. They could not have been muzzled by that chemical impulse forever. He should have known that. Their skin. The liar. Scared little boy. He is quiet now, and they are awake in his head. They flex fingers. They move silently but for the scrape of their leg dragging behind them in dead weight. They pull in breath, crisp and cold. The mechanics of existence are difficult. Half-remembered. Familiar again.

f   ro  m the sta rt it's been a game for us                                    

Quiet. Ahead, the woods. It is to them they creep. Tall things, slender trees, trunks stark and reaching to a sky fuzzy with stars. Wind stirs leaves, sending the curled husks of those dead things whispering over carpeted grass and sticks. They trace the skeleton claws of branches scratching the sky, and wonder if it is waiting for them. It always is.

Always watches. No eyes.

not anym o r  e                                                  

I'm coming for you                                   

Noise. Snap-twigs and rustled underbrush. They still, fall silent, scanning the place to which they've come. Something nearer? Something close? Something moving. Something here. Something they can find. Something they will find.

There's a trickle of code in their head.

and you will l e  ad me                

They remember. It is where they go. It is where everyone goes.

to t h   e      a    r           k

[ooc: so just after the fallout of the Rebel Base debacle, Tim ran out of medication and has masked out. The masked man is an alternate persona entirely - they don't have any of Tim's memories and are a very underdeveloped, generally aggressive consciousness. They don't talk, and basically look like this. Their instinct upon coming across anyone is mostly going to fall in the 'tackle and abduct' category, though reactions can and will vary. If you want to read more about their deal I've put info here and here. They'll be roaming Central Park all evening/night until the sun comes up again, at which point Tim will wake up and proceed to remember nothing of it.]

Comments

[postictal]

It folds beneath them with little resistance, thin and bony and easily collapsed beneath the weight of this body of theirs. Its blind struggles are like any other's, and they must recoil when a flailing fist collides with the side of their head.

Were they not awake, they think maybe their ears would be ringing.

As it is, it does not truly matter.

The hands or the feet or the neck. This is where they must begin. There is too much thrashing against them, too much force thrown to every side and angle. They must make that choice. How best to incapacitate a target.

The hands or the feet or the neck.

Perhaps now, the neck. They twitch closer, fingers oozing for the thing's throat. If they may wrap hands around it, press in exactly the right way, it can soon be over.

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot's head is pounding, whether from injury or adrenaline he can't tell, but there is a suspicious popping feeling in his shoulder where he fell every time he tries to move his arm in defense. So that can't be good.

He can see his attacker clearly enough now that he can tell it's a mask, a man wearing a mask and not some sort of supernatural horror. This would be bad enough on its own, only he's not saying anything, no demands for money, no slurs, just silence, and that's a completely different level of frightening.

Eliot starts to kick at him, starts to try to maybe lever this masked man off of him, and oh shit, his hip is fucked up somehow too. Stupid sidewalk. For a moment all he can feel is indignation at the unfairness of it all, how the hell is this even happening, to him of all people, this world was supposed to be a fresh start for him, and he must be more addled than he previously thought because then there's hands around his throat and he didn't even notice. Shit.

tw: strangulation

[postictal]

Their fingers drop over the neck, their grip hard and inescapable. They know how to long to hold, so that it only stops its breath for the shortest moment. They throw their weight onto their grasp over its throat, pinning it, driving relentlessly down.

It lashes out with legs that are too long, and they feel the sting of bruises beneath each impact but it means nothing to them. They are not the one who will wake with the howl of pain buried in every twitch of motion, each groan of bone. And so they press down, unflinching.

They will hold it until it is still, and stops its frightful protest.

tw: strangulation, joint injury, explosions

[eliotwaugh]

He can't breathe. He can't breathe and the pain in his shoulder is so much that it's narrowed his perception too much and his world is nothing but a sharp stabbing pulse and the suffocation is an afterthought, a background noise. He can't stand it; he wants to cry, he would curl up and sob if only this person, this thing weren't trying to stop his breath. It just isn't fair.

He can't go out like this, Eliot thinks, snuffed like a candle by a stranger in a chance encounter. He was supposed to die in glorious magical battle, or at the very least through extremes of debauchery. His vision is slowly going dark, and it scares him how at the same time the pain in his shoulder starts to fade, not the most important feeling after all, he needs the air more, and he's going to have to fight for it.

Eliot scrabbles in the grit and dirt with his good hand, searching for anything that would help him, anything he could use to defend himself, or perhaps it's just his last desperate twitchings to no real purpose. But then his fingers catch on something familiar—the cigarette he'd dropped when this masked asshole tackled him. Eliot clutches it desperately, the smoldering tip a pinprick against his palm, but in that moment he knows he's saved.

It's not an elegant bit of magic, but Eliot doesn't have to think about it, because this is what he's good at, this is what he does; it's messy and effective, and he flails his hand towards his attacker's face. As the cigarette hits the mask it happens, energy added into the system, and the little thing does what it's supposed to do, and burns. The paper catches and flares bright, even to Eliot's blurred vision, good old Merits. There's even a nice little explosive pop, and Eliot hopes that's enough to disorient the masked man enough that he can get away.

ditto the warnings above

[postictal]

The flails grow weak, each pulse of movement riddled with the fading of breath as the inevitable exhaustion takes its root. They cling on, relentless, waiting for the thing's vision to dim and for its struggles to cease. Fingers and feet scrape over dirt in its dying effort, but their hold does not relinquish. They will have it, and they will have its breath.

A bright streak in the corner of their vision is their only prelude to the glaring flash, the dead smell of burning things, the painful luminescence that scatters their vision into diverging and variegated points.

They are capable of no noise save the muffled drag of their body away from the searing light, that which is excruciatingly difficult to look at, and it does not occur to them that they have released their quarry until they have already done so.