fall in line or release the glitch

[gramarye]

Who: Wolfgang and Will, Shrieky, Olivia Dunham (prime), Stephanie Brown, open
What: Everyone's going to pick daisies and go on a picnic in the woods!
Where: Wherever is convenient! He's mostly in the southeast part of the city, but can be anywhere.
When: Various days over the second week of the siege.
Notes: If you want a thread starter ping me and I will make you one :3 or... idk just tag in somewhere random.
Warnings: Violence, mild horrors (like, relatively, yes), also some vague discussion of mental illness stuff in the OP.

After his Awakening, he sleeps.

When he wakes up, he's disoriented -- the room is unfamiliar, he's lying on a cot in a safehouse in Mog Hill, which someone explains to him when he asks. He has mercifully been left alone most of the time, except for someone who would come to check to make sure he hadn't actually died. That makes him pause and ask how long he was out.

Three days. He slept for three days. That's three days of being utterly useless and vulnerable, with no one knowing where he is, he doesn't know where he is -- three days of Baedal going to Hell.

Three days of dreamless sleep.

He wept. He's too embarrassed to ever admit it, and he thankfully held it together until he was alone, but he did. Whether it was out of frustration, or anger, or fear, or relief, he's still not sure. Too much emotion all at once when he's spent the last three years buried under the fog his medication produces in him -- blunted affect is a side effect of much of them. He doesn't typically feel much of anything, and he'll continue to not feel much of anything as soon as he can get back on them.

One of the women later finds him hunched over a table, making small, hysterical noises. There's a glass of wine and a jug of water on the table; she can't tell if he's laughing or crying. When she asks what happened, he glances at the glass and says in a voice like a dull razor, "Well, it's been done."

After that, they gently suggest he stay away from sharp objects.

Still, he refuses to have a mental breakdown in the middle of a citywide crisis -- if he's going to indulge (which he very well might) it will have to be at a more convenient time. Compartmentalization it is.

Wolfgang puts himself to work immediately. He can be useful. He has combat experience, specialized training. He has magic, apparently, although he hasn't really felt out the limits of what he can do (he is very afraid that the answer may be everything), there are a few things that come in immediately useful. It is very strange to think of himself as telepathic, but that's the word they use. He can listen for danger and hear people in need of help all without even stepping outside. He can imprint simple but strong impulses in the walls of the building itself, calm the hysterical, reduce the pain of the injured. Boil water, grow food, keep the light and heat on when the power occasionally goes out. So many useful little things. They don't always work the way he intends -- he finds, with great chagrin, that magic never quite wants to do what he wants it to do -- but it's serviceable.

Mostly, he looks after the children. They like him, especially the very young ones who aren't quite grown enough to understand what's going on -- he keeps them calm and entertained and out of their parents' hair for a while. He runs into a family he used to sit for in Bonetown and the little girl runs up, punches him in the leg, shouts "That's for missing my recital!" and stomps off to a corner to pout. He spends the next half hour sitting through an extremely dramatic reenactment of her big solo, interjecting with the appropriate amount of reverent awe for her skill and wit, while her mother finally gets a few private moments in the bathroom. Her eyes are red when she comes out; he doesn't mention it.

As the infestation goes on, though, it becomes clear to him that he can't stay here the entire time.

Or rather, that he won't.

Comments

[gramarye]

There is a long pause as Wolfgang appears to be looking intently at something that isn't visible, listening to something that isn't audible. He's consulting his Avatar, remembering this time that speaking out loud to something no one else can see or hear makes him look super fucking crazy and keeping it in his head.

Ten years ago, he would have known, would have been able to take the manticore back safely where it belonged. But that power is out of his reach anymore for reasons he's unsure of and when he asks his Avatar, all he gets from it is its typical vague, nearly-delirious confusion.

He is afraid to push too hard. He doesn't know if trying to make it remember things is only going to warp it further.

His head finally moves back. "I don't know... the temples might, yes. I don't -- Shada, probably. Maybe Haneul." The Dreaming is not the Middle Umbra but it's sort of the same idea, and he's not sure which of them has more influence over the spirit world, or if there's any understanding of the spirit world as he knows it, here -- but this thing came from somewhere accessible to Baedal, so someone has to know something.

But returning one lost creature back to the realm it belongs in is likely very low on their list of priorities. They're just going to have to hope the manticore holds up until someone can spare the time.

He eyes the manticore as it imitates Shrieky's movements, straightening up with him, its tail raised high above itself. Wolfgang knows fuck-all about cat body language, but that seems good.

"Let's... try Mog Hill. I am not sure anyone will have time for it until... whatever this is is over." And if it attacks anyone else while there, he is reasonably confident he can put it down before it hurts anyone.

Reasonably.