[but -- koby does reach out, slipping through the signatures of energy that signify each guest, like sliding his fingers through sand, until he comes up holding the dark-red, shifting one that means the stranger. that unseen nudge nudge.]
[the stranger smiles, and it's a vague brush of something in the energy. the psychic handshake is accepted, if that was the equivalent of a hand.]
I'm not. In my galaxy, I was one of the most powerful people you'd meet. Here, I'm average. It's not what I'm mad about.
[koby will feel it, when the stranger rocks his legs off the bed. his aura, its deep trench lava, starts to move. phone in one hand, the other in his pocket.]
What would you use your power for, if you had more of it?
[a very polite, brief, non-invasive handshake that retreats just far enough to observe the magma-esque aura as it shifts, moves.]
I see. That's interesting, that you're limited here. I have moments or days or even weeks where my abilities don't work at all, but maybe I have more of them because they awoke here, in this world, instead of my own.
I'm sure my limits remain the same. There's always a bigger animal, that's all.
That can't be so hard to believe. You've met the people here. 'Superheroes.' 'Gods.' Telepaths like nothing you've seen. Someone has to be average. Why not me?
[he doesn't love it. but there are worse things. he didn't attack the temple by himself, for reasons. being overmatched is merely a logistical reality. as is the fact that a little thing like koby would not have a mission to destroy a hostile order of hypocritical monks. the stranger can't pretend to be surprised, as he walks.]
There are average people here, yes. But I don't think you're one of them. It doesn't match what I've felt or seen of you.
[privately, koby doesn't think anyone is well and truly average in the house -- there's something, some wound or pain or power or burden that distinguishes them. even people who otherwise seem ordinary.]
Here, I mostly use it to feel if my friends are in trouble. I can check in on them from a distance, feel if they're injured or something's wrong. I do a lot of running around, as I'm sure you've noticed, but I can't be everywhere all the time. Except now I sort of can.
You should've seen me when I first got here. Much, much worse. Also a lot of the confidence isn't entirely genuine -- the house tends to strip away our sense of propriety and it makes people much, much bolder.
Both, usually. I have some first aid experience. And I killed a lot of the undead back at the beginning of the year. I'm not as helpless as I look.
I hope your bite is bloodier than your emotional rhetoric.
[pac-man is getting closer, pinging off the ethereal sonar of koby's ability. a long-legged lope, an indolent gait. not particularly hurried. negging happens on a lot of simultaneous levels for him.]
[neatly, clipped, while koby holes up in his particular favorite corner of the library, stacks of his notes and his books and his dossiers all around him, stone cold mug of tea he'd forgotten hours ago sitting next to a placidly sleeping white duck. it's an odd sight, except for the constancy of it -- his unofficial office, his home away from home.]
→ action! (I have chosen to assume desk or I will delete this tag accidentally somehow)
[it would be obvious to few others, when the stranger arrives. he's another good-looking patron in a library that's host to almost entirely good-looking patrons, with some margin for subjectivity. but his aura is guttural and carries across the space. red migmatite trails spilling vivid through the snaggletooth rows of books, black deepening the shadows between the stacks.
and then he steps into view. looks at koby. looks at the cold tea. also, the duck (??). walking up to the desk without pause, his face pleasantly neutral. even when it—that is, his face, his whole head, his entire person, drops below the level of the table, vanishing underneath. he is very agile with the asian squat, for a person who does not know he is asian. and it's an easy pivot, heel and hand, til he's arrived at koby's feet.
his arms are layered up in cozy folds of merino wool today, arranging themselves comfortably atop of the boy's knees. his head is at about crotch height, and something about the lazy sweep of his eyes suggests he is contemplating whether or not he can undo koby's fly with use of his teeth alone. but his tone is conversational:] What do you think anger is?
[koby doesn’t look up for a moment, from highlighting and annotating and paperclipping pages together, though of course he feels the stranger’s presence appearing in the library, like watching the first red tendrils of light creep over the horizon, impossible to miss, blaring and bright.
however, when the stranger steps around the corner of the nearest shelf, takes in the mess, the duck, the tea, then suddenly – disappears, koby sits up a bit straighter, with a quiet sound of alarm –] Oh, that–
– oh. [because now there’s a (potentially) dangerous man under his desk, arms resting on his knees, looking upwards at him with quiet eyes and sharp cheekbones and questions about anger. koby is in his typical library uniform – overalls over a sweater, an aesthetic that has gotten him more than a few kindergarten teacher comparisons – but he doesn’t move away from the gentle weight of the stranger across his knees.]
Well. [said as he reaches out to stroke the duck’s feathers, as she lifts her head and gives the entire situation a bored sort of fowlish look.] An emotion? And – a reaction?
[the stranger makes a face that's the equivalent of a teetering hand. looks a bit like one of those smushed nosed cats. obviously, koby is not technically incorrect. it's a good starting point. requires contemplation, briefly, the stranger scratching his thumb across his chin, rasp rasp. he's not too stubbly there, but the psychological havoc of simply existing at saltburnt does periodically put him off his shaving routine. there's more friction there than there should be.
lesson planning takes a lot of time and effort. more than the teaching itself.] Sure. Yeah. Anger wants things to be fair. Even when its impossible. Even when it can't know what fair is.
But that's what it wants. [there is a steady expectation fully formed in his face, a stalagmite of sentiment growing up to meet koby's regard. that the boy from the sea will take the matter to thought. even if there is a vaguely inappropriate older man sitting at his feet, legs crossed over the toes of his tasseled boat shoes, or whatever. the stranger does no mind reading. he just watches the soft oval of koby's face like it might change moon phases if he forgets to blink long enough.]
[the position is, perhaps, a bit odd – koby doesn’t usually have conversations with people sitting under desks. but he considers the comments with his usual level of focus and dedication, tilting his head as the stranger speaks and eying the dark brush of stubble along the sharp line of his jaw. koby, in contrast, has pink hair on his arms, beneath them, on his legs and between them, all light enough that even though he rarely addresses the existence of it, it’s impossible to see unless the light hits just-so.]
So it’s – a response to injustice. Perceived or otherwise. [perhaps incongruously, koby’s wearing converse all-stars. he likes them, they remind him of home.] I guess that makes sense.
[then, at the question, koby shakes his head, reaching to scoop the duck off the table and into his lap, petting along her smooth, sleek feathers. she regards the stranger with cool indifference.] Not when I think of it that way, I guess? If it’s just a response to injustice, that’s – understandable. Not worth being afraid of.
Lincoln doesn’t bite, by the way, unless she’s hungry.
[for some reason, the stranger's apprentice has a duck. he had clocked this earlier, but the evidence is somewhat harder to ignore on eye-level. he studies the avian. back home, in his caves by the sea, he had a tendency to let marine fauna wander in and out. made peace with the occasional incidence of guano. considerably less corrosive than sea air.
he likes animals, as a general rule. less when they're trying to kill him, but the ones who try to eat him with lesser ambitions are just doing what they are meant to do. in the quiet of a sunlit library, the stranger reaches out to pat the duck. he should donate a finger to a good cause, honestly. there isn't even a lightsaber to wave around here.] I'd say, it's worth a healthy respect. An a long and intimate acquaintance. One thing to know, logically.
Another to have it, viscerally. [the feathers are nice. capture a lot of warmth. he pets with the grain. no wonder earth people are constantly stripping nests to fill their winter clothes, comforters, and pillows. he's not going to do that, obviously. lincoln is plainly a lesbian; hopefully above the self-disfigurement that comes of compulsory nesting behavior.]
Will you show me, the last time you were angry? [it's a big ask, and a gesture at boundaries set. can't possibly be a shock.]
[the duck tilts her tiny, fragile, birdish head into the patting hand, scrunching her eyes close in the sweet way ducks do, and clacking her beak in approval a couple times – revealing a couple rows of incredibly sharp, incongruous teeth, like a piranha. koby seems unconcerned, still stroking the longer feathers along her back.]
Logically. Right. It does seem to be one or the other. [lincoln, self-satisfied, turns to mouth lightly at koby’s hand, deadly teeth not so much as scratching his scarred-up knuckles, guiding him to pet another spot.] You either feel it or know it.
[the question gets a thoughtful headtilt, then koby shakes his head.] No. I’ll tell you about it, but – no. [showing is too close, too viscerally vivid, the memory still one that jabs and aches in his chest.]
[being told no is no fun, but the stranger has been here before. recently. someone else small, stubborn, compelled by principles that felt at odds with the grief raging inside her mind. the stranger looks at the duck's mouth, wondering that koby doesn't see it. like drawn to like.
or maybe he does. that being the problem. the latent cyclone of energy waiting around him more dangerous than a bird's mandibles. the stranger's face is neutral, looking up from the shadow of the table. no gentle tricks of posture and rhetoric will grant him passage across this bridge. he'll reassess. may have been a mistake, starting this with words; they make distance.]
All right. Tell me. [—or it wasn't. distance is strategic, too. a slow approach, a steady pace. people talk themselves into feeling, all the time. his fingers follow the grain of duck feathers and his chin settles on his wrist, a neutral weight on the cap of koby's knee.]
[he doesn’t push, and some of koby’s carefully-held defenses retreat, folding in on themselves like brandished swords sheathed. the stranger looks at him with dark, intent eyes, unreadable, the ebb of energy from him little more than present and listening, and maybe koby could delve deeper, try to parse out his intent, but. it’s a nice day, the sun is streaming through the windows, and he doesn’t find he wants to.
so instead he shifts backwards in his seat, thinks – as if he needs to think, as if he doesn’t already, immediately know.] It was when I came back, from dying. [a bizarre statement in any context except saltburnt.] When we first come back to life, we’re not…really ourselves. We need to have a stone with our name on it retrieved from the lake before we’re fully back to normal.
[lincoln lifts her head at that, a keenly knowing glint in her eyes, watching the way koby’s hands tremble a little when he adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with a fingertip.] I was very angry at – pretty much everyone until I recovered my stone.
[sounds like the esoteric bullshit of souls again, except that the prevalence of narrative suggests metaphysical rule of reality beneath the abstraction. the stranger does not usually mind improving upon his ignorance, but the month has brought an adequately unpleasant series of surprises. still, he carries off well. looks patient. koby isn't the object of his ire.
this place is fucking terrifying. but it takes him a breath—three—to measure this new information and cut around it. by end of week, it might be ready to wear. not as fashionable as converse shoes. better arch support, though. some of this is not new at all. learning from his pupils. be they embodiment of vergence, traitors, or particularly well-versed in twenty-first century sexting. (he'd like to see koby angry, but at this point, that's a foregone conclusion. the quake in koby's finger feels like a promise made in a room built to echo.)]
What shape did your anger take? For whom?
[he stops touching the duck, which is not a euphemism for anything. token respect. she is also present, listening, and a little too intense. the dark deserves to be loved with dedication. he folds his arm over the other.]
[sometimes the mention of it – death, resurrection, reversal, coming back wrong – is what prompts people to really understand that saltburnt isn’t the place they might’ve thought it was. hedonistic, ostentatious house of lavish luxury, yes, but there’s a circle of scar tissue around koby’s throat that’ll never let him forget what else it can hold.
he reaches up now, tugs his sweater collar into place, self-consciously, even though there’s little to no chance the stranger can see the thick band of scarring. the one on his forehead, yes, a criss-cross from another death fall-out, months before, half-hidden by the overgrown flop of cotton-candy hair. but the scar of his death is hidden, still, until spring and summer and warmth comes.]
I was a selkie. [and in spite of himself, there’s a note of fondness in the word, affection for the form he’d taken, the way this place had protected him from the horror of coming back to life when he shouldn’t have.] Is that a legend, where you’re from? Seals that can turn human, shed their skins.
[lincoln is watching, silent, knowing. koby’s rough fingertips are impossibly gentle when he strokes the tiny feathers of her head, her neck, small as scales.] It sounds like a nice fairytale, but – I’d wake up every night, go out and stand in the lake in my pajamas, watching the water. I’d go blue, before I went in, and if anyone stopped me, I’d be so – angry. So upset at them. Even though they were trying to help me.
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[he's assuming it's some sort of training exercise.]
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For speaking the ocean.
Maybe bite like it too. Some point.
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Well. I wouldn't mind either. Come find me.
But tell me how you do it. How you find people. Is it the same as me?
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I just happen to like walking.
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[but -- koby does reach out, slipping through the signatures of energy that signify each guest, like sliding his fingers through sand, until he comes up holding the dark-red, shifting one that means the stranger. that unseen nudge nudge.]
Found you.
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I'm not. In my galaxy, I was one of the most powerful people you'd meet. Here, I'm average. It's not what I'm mad about.
[koby will feel it, when the stranger rocks his legs off the bed. his aura, its deep trench lava, starts to move. phone in one hand, the other in his pocket.]
What would you use your power for, if you had more of it?
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I see. That's interesting, that you're limited here.
I have moments or days or even weeks where my abilities don't work at all, but maybe I have more of them because they awoke here, in this world, instead of my own.
To help people. [immediate, prompt.]
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That can't be so hard to believe. You've met the people here. 'Superheroes.' 'Gods.' Telepaths like nothing you've seen. Someone has to be average. Why not me?
[he doesn't love it. but there are worse things. he didn't attack the temple by himself, for reasons. being overmatched is merely a logistical reality. as is the fact that a little thing like koby would not have a mission to destroy a hostile order of hypocritical monks. the stranger can't pretend to be surprised, as he walks.]
How? What would that look like?
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It doesn't match what I've felt or seen of you.
[privately, koby doesn't think anyone is well and truly average in the house -- there's something, some wound or pain or power or burden that distinguishes them. even people who otherwise seem ordinary.]
Here, I mostly use it to feel if my friends are in trouble. I can check in on them from a distance, feel if they're injured or something's wrong.
I do a lot of running around, as I'm sure you've noticed, but I can't be everywhere all the time.
Except now I sort of can.
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[the stranger was concerned with math. but he doesn't mind the encouragement. he has a surfeit of confidence! it's a character flaw.]
Do you call for help, if they're injured or something's wrong? Run in yourself?
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Also a lot of the confidence isn't entirely genuine -- the house tends to strip away our sense of propriety and it makes people much, much bolder.
Both, usually. I have some first aid experience.
And I killed a lot of the undead back at the beginning of the year. I'm not as helpless as I look.
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[he should probably be asking how koby did it. or, you know. 'what is the undead?' and yet, and yet.]
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[pac-man is getting closer, pinging off the ethereal sonar of koby's ability. a long-legged lope, an indolent gait. not particularly hurried. negging happens on a lot of simultaneous levels for him.]
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[neatly, clipped, while koby holes up in his particular favorite corner of the library, stacks of his notes and his books and his dossiers all around him, stone cold mug of tea he'd forgotten hours ago sitting next to a placidly sleeping white duck. it's an odd sight, except for the constancy of it -- his unofficial office, his home away from home.]
→ action! (I have chosen to assume desk or I will delete this tag accidentally somehow)
and then he steps into view. looks at koby. looks at the cold tea. also, the duck (??). walking up to the desk without pause, his face pleasantly neutral. even when it—that is, his face, his whole head, his entire person, drops below the level of the table, vanishing underneath. he is very agile with the asian squat, for a person who does not know he is asian. and it's an easy pivot, heel and hand, til he's arrived at koby's feet.
his arms are layered up in cozy folds of merino wool today, arranging themselves comfortably atop of the boy's knees. his head is at about crotch height, and something about the lazy sweep of his eyes suggests he is contemplating whether or not he can undo koby's fly with use of his teeth alone. but his tone is conversational:] What do you think anger is?
all good haha :D
however, when the stranger steps around the corner of the nearest shelf, takes in the mess, the duck, the tea, then suddenly – disappears, koby sits up a bit straighter, with a quiet sound of alarm –] Oh, that–
– oh. [because now there’s a (potentially) dangerous man under his desk, arms resting on his knees, looking upwards at him with quiet eyes and sharp cheekbones and questions about anger. koby is in his typical library uniform – overalls over a sweater, an aesthetic that has gotten him more than a few kindergarten teacher comparisons – but he doesn’t move away from the gentle weight of the stranger across his knees.]
Well. [said as he reaches out to stroke the duck’s feathers, as she lifts her head and gives the entire situation a bored sort of fowlish look.] An emotion? And – a reaction?
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lesson planning takes a lot of time and effort. more than the teaching itself.] Sure. Yeah. Anger wants things to be fair. Even when its impossible. Even when it can't know what fair is.
But that's what it wants. [there is a steady expectation fully formed in his face, a stalagmite of sentiment growing up to meet koby's regard. that the boy from the sea will take the matter to thought. even if there is a vaguely inappropriate older man sitting at his feet, legs crossed over the toes of his tasseled boat shoes, or whatever. the stranger does no mind reading. he just watches the soft oval of koby's face like it might change moon phases if he forgets to blink long enough.]
That scare you? Does it only scare you?
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So it’s – a response to injustice. Perceived or otherwise. [perhaps incongruously, koby’s wearing converse all-stars. he likes them, they remind him of home.] I guess that makes sense.
[then, at the question, koby shakes his head, reaching to scoop the duck off the table and into his lap, petting along her smooth, sleek feathers. she regards the stranger with cool indifference.] Not when I think of it that way, I guess? If it’s just a response to injustice, that’s – understandable. Not worth being afraid of.
Lincoln doesn’t bite, by the way, unless she’s hungry.
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he likes animals, as a general rule. less when they're trying to kill him, but the ones who try to eat him with lesser ambitions are just doing what they are meant to do. in the quiet of a sunlit library, the stranger reaches out to pat the duck. he should donate a finger to a good cause, honestly. there isn't even a lightsaber to wave around here.] I'd say, it's worth a healthy respect. An a long and intimate acquaintance. One thing to know, logically.
Another to have it, viscerally. [the feathers are nice. capture a lot of warmth. he pets with the grain. no wonder earth people are constantly stripping nests to fill their winter clothes, comforters, and pillows. he's not going to do that, obviously. lincoln is plainly a lesbian; hopefully above the self-disfigurement that comes of compulsory nesting behavior.]
Will you show me, the last time you were angry? [it's a big ask, and a gesture at boundaries set. can't possibly be a shock.]
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Logically. Right. It does seem to be one or the other. [lincoln, self-satisfied, turns to mouth lightly at koby’s hand, deadly teeth not so much as scratching his scarred-up knuckles, guiding him to pet another spot.] You either feel it or know it.
[the question gets a thoughtful headtilt, then koby shakes his head.] No. I’ll tell you about it, but – no. [showing is too close, too viscerally vivid, the memory still one that jabs and aches in his chest.]
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or maybe he does. that being the problem. the latent cyclone of energy waiting around him more dangerous than a bird's mandibles. the stranger's face is neutral, looking up from the shadow of the table. no gentle tricks of posture and rhetoric will grant him passage across this bridge. he'll reassess. may have been a mistake, starting this with words; they make distance.]
All right. Tell me. [—or it wasn't. distance is strategic, too. a slow approach, a steady pace. people talk themselves into feeling, all the time. his fingers follow the grain of duck feathers and his chin settles on his wrist, a neutral weight on the cap of koby's knee.]
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so instead he shifts backwards in his seat, thinks – as if he needs to think, as if he doesn’t already, immediately know.] It was when I came back, from dying. [a bizarre statement in any context except saltburnt.] When we first come back to life, we’re not…really ourselves. We need to have a stone with our name on it retrieved from the lake before we’re fully back to normal.
[lincoln lifts her head at that, a keenly knowing glint in her eyes, watching the way koby’s hands tremble a little when he adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with a fingertip.] I was very angry at – pretty much everyone until I recovered my stone.
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this place is fucking terrifying. but it takes him a breath—three—to measure this new information and cut around it. by end of week, it might be ready to wear. not as fashionable as converse shoes. better arch support, though. some of this is not new at all. learning from his pupils. be they embodiment of vergence, traitors, or particularly well-versed in twenty-first century sexting. (he'd like to see koby angry, but at this point, that's a foregone conclusion. the quake in koby's finger feels like a promise made in a room built to echo.)]
What shape did your anger take? For whom?
[he stops touching the duck, which is not a euphemism for anything. token respect. she is also present, listening, and a little too intense. the dark deserves to be loved with dedication. he folds his arm over the other.]
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he reaches up now, tugs his sweater collar into place, self-consciously, even though there’s little to no chance the stranger can see the thick band of scarring. the one on his forehead, yes, a criss-cross from another death fall-out, months before, half-hidden by the overgrown flop of cotton-candy hair. but the scar of his death is hidden, still, until spring and summer and warmth comes.]
I was a selkie. [and in spite of himself, there’s a note of fondness in the word, affection for the form he’d taken, the way this place had protected him from the horror of coming back to life when he shouldn’t have.] Is that a legend, where you’re from? Seals that can turn human, shed their skins.
[lincoln is watching, silent, knowing. koby’s rough fingertips are impossibly gentle when he strokes the tiny feathers of her head, her neck, small as scales.] It sounds like a nice fairytale, but – I’d wake up every night, go out and stand in the lake in my pajamas, watching the water. I’d go blue, before I went in, and if anyone stopped me, I’d be so – angry. So upset at them. Even though they were trying to help me.
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cw: vague passive suicidal ideation if u squint
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okay fine this was very anime bb boy
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