#i rewrote a scene from an rp forever ago as a drabble and it was a lot of fun!

[townofcadence]

Artair with SOBBED

Glimpses of the Past SOBBED: a scene from my muse's past in which they broke down

The path to the surface is short.

He rushes, half blind through the dark. The walls are closer, the further he sprint-stumbles. He clutches his cargo tightly; two glass anchors, both damaged, though one in far greater disrepair. They beat sluggishly where he cradles them, and it only spurs him onward, until the solid rock is grazing both shoulders. He leaves streaks of black-like ink and deep dark red along the walls in his reckless speed. He doesn't dare slow, not even when the walls are almost crushing him, and he's clawing at the earth to dig. It hurts, he can only do this with the adrenaline. But just a little more. Just a little more. He's so tired but it's just one more push.

A rumble from below highlights the need for his haste. The frayed ribbons of his muscles flex and push. His teeth sink into his lip.

It's so painfully thin, a fissure where he can see the sky above. He sinks in between the cragged stones, forcing more away with a stained hand. Small stones bounce on the floor and larger ones thud. Dirt smears his face, blending with the viscous black clinging to it, painting his skin, and making a tacky paste. Artair's head pounded like it was trying to break it's own crack to the sky, but he didn't know if it was the injuries, the way this place was swelling and falling apart, or the spilling magic that was bleeding out of him.

He can't focus. He can't think-- he just pushes, scrapes, drags himself along those rocky steppes. He forces through inch by inch at the crawl of a snail, until he breaches the opening with his leg. He pushes-- his torso follows after a painful drag against wall, as does his arm, still curled at his side with the anchors. His leg follows, and he's free. He spills onto the mossy ground. He can't stop moving, can't afford to. He assembles himself, scoops the anchors, and sprints across the trembling green.

But Artair does look up; he's in tatters and unrepairable and it's the most beautiful sky he's ever seen.

The rumbles are turning to cracking earth. More fissures are opening behind him. He pours on the speed, running directionless, so long as it takes him away. Hexagonal pillars of basalt collapse, leaving deep pits back to the depths he'd escaped. The billowing smell of moss and decay mushrooms from below, and his stomach knots.

He keeps running. He staggers, sways, but his feet stay under him; they carry him further and further in hazy, panicked disarray. Every passing beat the damage he's suffered threatens to send him down to the ground, but he forces each agonizing step, forces himself just a little further. He needs to survive.

The word beats like a drum against his skull. Maybe that's his pulse. He pushes on, along the downward slope. Maybe he'll be fast enough, if he follows the inselberg to the base. He falls once, scraping the useless remains of his arm against the ground. He shifts into a roll, before pushing with the momentum back into tearing down the mountainside.

He hits pine-straw, and his footing is tenuous. he slips, between the needles on the ground and patches of damp mud. He feels numb enough that any mistep or drop is far away. Speckles and darkness halo his vision. Neither slows his pace, taking lashing branches to his arm and face, taking boiling breaths and the strain on his barely functioning body without stopping, careening as fast as humanly possible from that place.

His feet hurt-- his lungs hurt, everything hurts-- he's barely functioning now, but--- he has them. He has to push on, push on until it's safe- keep going, keep going keep going keep going-- The words fall to senseless noise as they run into each other, but he grips them like a lifeline. The woods get deeper, darker, and he knows he's losing himself even further, and turning the eye of anything that lurks. It's the wrong way, surely, to get somewhere safe. To get back to one of Lament's marked paths, or to his house out here.

But it's safer still than where the earth was swallowing the surface. He only slowed once the rumbles were a distant memory, no longer under his feet. And even still, he carried on while catching ragged breaths, just a little further to be sure. He trips again on numb feet, but this time he stays down, hitting his knees with shaking shoulders. He's lost, almost alone and he can barely hold that thought between his fingers. His skin is crawling, still burning, still itching all the way to his core. He fingernails ache to bite into flesh, to pull it off somehow so he doesn't have to feel it, or this contamination plastered to his skin.

His body curls forward, without his say-so. He wants to touch the remains of his left arm, to wipe at what he knows is more than ichor and muck and water, but he can't bare the thought of not having Lament and Error's anchors touching him. If he let them go they might disappear, or something else might happen. He has to protect them, he's already put them through all of this, he has to keep them safe he has to---

His shudders from all the sensations, and sinks lower still. His legs splay on either side of his thighs where he's seated, and he hugs those beating hearts to his own chest. The sound of grinding glass pulls him back, and his teary gaze runs over their surfaces.

Lament's is damaged, slightly, darker than it should be, but it still looks strong, and beats with regular rhythm. Error's--- it's damaged, it has been since he first laid eyes on it, but now it seems dulled further, listless with the barest, weakest beat at a much slower pace. A mournful keen escapes the hollowed core of his chest.

"A-Artair?" A hand touches his shoulder. It's heavy, shaking, he can feel the tremor in the palm where it places itself against his shoulder. He knows Lament without looking up. He doesn't have the energy to answer, failing him yet again. His eyes are on the anchors. They're damaged, damaged from chasing after him into the dark-- it was his fault. He'd almost lost them. He'd almost fucking murdered them again by being whatever the fuck was---was wrong with him.

He's.....

He curls again, into a kowtow, shaking where he can't stop himself, but rigidly stiff and unmoving where his joints are locked in place. "I--- I'm sorry--- I'm so sorry-- I'm sorry--"

"Hey." He's faintly aware of movement, of a knee entering the peripheries of his vision. He feels tugs to his hoodie, all he's got left to wear, trying to pull the rest of his body with it. He resists. Resists the comfort he shouldn't have. This is all his fucking fault-- he's sorry---

"It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault, Starlight." Lament's voice is meant to soothe and it's so soft and gentle it hurts all the more, like a searing brand against his beating heart. He hates it he hates it because he wants it. He wants to curl up in Lament's arms and pretend he doesn't exist, doesn't ruin everything he touches. But he does.

"I-it was-- It was--" He cowers like a chastised animal to Lament's gentle comfort. He shies away from the touch. "I-- it grabbed me-- I left the path-- my fault I'm sorry--you got hurt for me--- I feel it-- it hurts--- it hurts i know it does i'm so sorry." Hands were pulling him now, more insistent. He doesn't give in to the warmth; he stays wrapped around those anchors, all paralyzed limbs and sharp angles. The arms that wrap around him choke something free from his throat, and he crumbles into ruins under fingertips brushing through his damp, matted hair.

"We're okay, Starlight. It's okay now." A squeeze that nearly unmakes him. "Its not your fault. It's not."

"I--- it took me--- I went--- Error-- he's--" A sob threatens to break him further, to shatter him to pieces. His voice has to stop. It rises in his throat and he locks it there.

The energy too, the boundless depths of it he'd taken in, roiled inside him like a restless beast. An impulse takes him, and he brings the anchors to his face. A warm breath passes from him, exhaled slow over the glass with his lips just touching the surface. With it, comes a fraction of that power, first as a trickle and then as a flood, an electric current of vitality. He doesn't want it-- they both can have it, if it helps them, even a fraction.

More energy was donated to Error-- he pushed it into them, the only way he knew, pushing more and more and so much of the excess he'd been given--- he didn't want it. Didn't care. He needed his friends, needed them alright, and if it wrung him dry he'd accept it, welcome it even, if it meant they came out of this almost unscathed. He knows some of the cracks are his fault--- maybe this would be enough for them to mend them, to make up for something.

"Wha--" He could feel Lament's shock like a distant ripple behind his focus. It shifted to concern, but it didn't slow his gift. He offered it to them, tenderly. "Artair... you can....when...." There's a pause above him, and then a sigh. He can feel a pang like hunger, in his gut. "Artair. Don't... don't give too much."

He ignored him. He was--- he was doused in viscous black slime, in blood and tears and blood and ancient waters filled with equally old magics. He was in ruins, and there's ghostly impressions still skimming his skin, touching like hands that made him want to pull his hair from his head. He focuses harder, curled over the anchors and pushing everything he has at them, desperate.

Fix it fix it fix it fix it come back come back come back---

His nose bled, a line of gold. He just wanted them to be okay--- that's all that mattered. He watches Error's pink heart shimmer with gold threads in a pattern from where he'd pressed his lips. The fissures were dangerously wide in his anchor, but the slivers of light move and weave through the glass, forming sutures. The cracks themselves shimmer with the same light, and as the 'threads' pull taut, they narrow, glittering with kintsugi gold instead.

He can feel Error there now, beneath his lips, the presence of him, stronger now. It tastes like kitchen spices and tingles his tongue. The anchor itself gives a thump, a beat like a heart. Then another. They grow in pace, in strength. A flourish of pastel flames, and he's there now, laying against his lap, his hair a mess of spilling locks over his pants.

If there was a threat of tears before, they're a promise now. Artair feels the sob that leaves him vibrate his ribs and run down his spine. His fingers move, motioning midair as if to clutch to Error, and only stopping short. He curls his hand instead to his chest, bracing his knuckles against his mouth as if to stifle himself. From what he isn't sure. But Error is there. He's still there. He's so perfect too, so pristine and fresh from his anchor and-- looking so much better than when he'd retreated into it in the first place.

But his own fingers were still stained black with that corrupted substance.

Artair sways now, the loss of energy like an endless void in his chest, something cold and heavy. But it was worth it, and all he can manage is a smile through thickening tears. He's there, warm, right there, right at his knees, over his legs. He gives still, even now; his eyes cross and his head splits, but he pours it into both of them, everything he has. His eyes wont' stop running, gazing at Error, at Lament, at both of them.

It's all so much-- too much. Another sob wracks him. He wants to throw himself over them, covering them with his frail body as if that might protect them from the world. But he can't-- he's tainted, and--- he's the cause. The root of all problems, the epicenter of misfortune like the eye of a bullshit hurricane where everything seems so calm, but it's all a lie and it gets everyone killed.

His face screws up in pain, but he dips his head to hide it-- it'd be wrong, to make them carry that too, when they've already sacrificed so much. Instead his hand plants on the earth on the other side of Error's waist to where he sits, and he hovers over his unconscious form. He doesn't touch him, doesn't contaminate him, but stays there, still sobbing in silent tears with shaking shoulders. His hand feels like fire, swollen from injury and covered in dirt digging himself from the earth. His skin is ripped and he's bleeding, but all he can do is stare at the soft expression on Error's face. He doesn't know what he wants to do, what the point of this is. And still he does it, watching until his eyes are too blurry to do so.

He shifts and rubs at them and they burn, it all burns. His skin feels worse too, like something is seeping inside him from cuts and scrapes and dissolving what it finds until he's cold and numb. He weeps harder, and screams. It shatters the moment and scrapes his throat raw and does nothing at all. He screams at the world, at this moment, at everything, all of it. It cuts out near as swift as it ripped from his throat. He sits in the following silence, hurting, hurting inside and out and down to his core where it feels like the pieces of him are snapping apart. Instincts make him want to screw his eyes shut, and block it all out, but he can't take his eyes away from Error. The moment he does, he might disappear.

"T-take him-- take him-- I can't touch him Lament. You have to carry him." He speaks, finally, breaking the silence he'd rendered. "Have to get him--- somewhere. 'Snot safe here, can feel it. You-- you have to carry him. I can't-- I can't-- I'm sorry." He rocks, but it doesn't make him feel better. "Please--- please?"

The expression on Lament's face reeks of pity, and it shames him until his throat closes. "Okay... I will, Artair. I will." There's a crack in his voice that sends a new fissure through him, but he can't respond further. He can only wipe at his tears and smear more of this disgusting ichor on his face.

Lament gathers Error in his arms, and lifts him without trouble; his weight is nothing as a spirit. Artair nods his gratitude, before pushing Error's anchor into Error's lap where he's curled, forming a space to house it safely. He feels something dripping in his hoodie, but he ignores it, taking the time to fix it so they won't fall. Error's anchor floats instead, gliding to its place on the chain at his waist, tucked in his pocket. But even that small movement is a precious gift now.

"Th--thank you. Thank you, Lament." He presses a chaste kiss to Lament's anchor, and offers some of his remaining energy. He's got nothing but fumes left, but it makes him feel better. If Lament can use it to heal, to have the strength for the trip ahead, then he could use it better. He sniffles, clutching the beating heart close. He sways as he closes his eyes, staying pressed against the glass. "I'm..... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry......"

He saw a shiver run through Lament where he stood. "...Come on, Starlight. Let's get you cleaned up and looked after."

Lament's gaze was intense as he looked down at him. He felt a thousand miles beneath him. He knows he isn't angry, but he can't tell what he feels right now, and it's... unsettling. "I--- I'll follow you." He sniffles one last time, before nodding. Lament frowns as he says it.

"Will you be able to walk by yourself?" There's something, but he's too tired to parse the complexity of it.

"I.... I don't want you to touch me." He gestured to all of himself with an emphatic swing of his hand, at his soiled clothing and his inked skin, at his bloodstains and the dirt gritted against him. "I don't-- don't want anyone to. To touch me.--- and----...." His voice gives out, and he shrinks ever further, fingers placing Lament's anchor where he'd nestled Error's own with delicacy. "I.....I can walk... I-if we go slow, I'll be fine."

"Artair.....it's okay. To touch me. But i won't force you. I'll draw you a bath once we get back, if you want." The pity is back again. and he-- he can't. He can't, he can't touch Lament, he can't touch any of them, he'd hurt them he'd stain them he'd make this worse somehow, he couldn't, he had to do this alone--.

He doesn't answer, but when Lament moves, he follows. He holds himself with his arm, staring off with an unfocused gaze at Lament's feet, shuffling after him with almost robotic steps, and tears still streaking his face.