i want you here (open)

[jemerite]

Characters: jemerite and You (open)
Date: July 17th
Summary: He can't do this to her.
Warnings: Zinc's world is vaguely offensive in its necrophilia? Her narrative can be kind of gory. She thinks about killing things, a lot.

She wakes up cold.

She's often cold, unless sitting in open sunlight, or curled up next to the heating unit that does a poor job of keeping Barbet's large studio warm in the wintertime. She hated the cold, really, it was a constant reminder of the stillness in her chest, but what she hated the most was waking up cold, like she'd been dead the whole night through. Barbet shouldn't have left her, she hates when he does and she usually wakes up as soon as he stirs because it's cold and it's lonely--(perhaps the loneliness is the worst. She... she hates that feeling, she wants to rip it out of her mind and ruin it forever.)

There is a moue of discontent on her lips already as she sits up, but it does not take her long to see things are very changed. And she knows exactly what's happened.

He's abandoned her. He'd drugged her and left her out here in the woods to die. The certainty of it rocks her, and causes a deep twisting sensation in her stomach. Hate. Hurt. Misery.

"Barbet?" She looks around herself, but all she sees is the cat approaching with the scroll in its mouth. Zinc hisses at it furiously, settled forward on her hands and knees like an angry little animal. The cat seems nonplussed, but it sits down, tail swishing. Zinc ignores it as she gets to her feet unsteadily, looking around again, sees only trees and she can't smell him anywhere. How is she meant to track him down and kill him if he's erased his scent?

"You can't!" She shouts, hands curling into fists, her well-kept nails biting into her palms with the fury of it. He would scold her for that. "You did this!"

She sees the path out of the clearing and begins to follow it, but what she sees only deepens her despair and that cat is following her. "I will eat you, if you do not get away from me," she snarls gutturally at the fluffy thing. Its eyes narrow at her, smug and nonreactive. She hisses, but carries on walking.

All she finds is forest and field. And, eventually, she drops down into the grass and simply begins to scream. Wordless, furious, keening. He can't do this to her. She can't even weep in this decaying body, and it's his fault that she has the desire to at all.


[ooc; I always write log openers in prose, but feel free to switch to action.]

Comments

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

OK so there's confused yelling from the part of the Gardens Jessica has mentally designated "the newbie area." This is usual, and she heads in the direction of the voice.

Then there's screaming from the newbie area. She breaks into a run, and stumbles breathlessly into the field of wildflowers bearing the new arrival.

"hahh hahh... are you- hahh- okay?!"

[jemerite]

Zinc is startled by this thing suddenly bursting onto the scene and she scuttles backwards on her hands, hissing as she curls into herself. It takes her a moment to recognize the girl as a human, she looks strange, smells a little strange as well.

Perhaps, under better circumstances, she might have been more curious, but at the moment she is angry and she is alone--(He's left her, that bastard, how could he?)

"Where"--she snaps it, low and rasping--"am I?" She growls furiously, ranting to herself in slurred words. "He can't. He can't leave me."

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

...definitely not OK. Emotionally, at least. She looks intact, at least.

"Uhh... hahh hold on a sec..." Trying to explain the Gardens to newbies is hard enough without also being out of breath.

"OK, um... did you read the thing the cat gave you?"

[jemerite]

Her nose scrunches up in a little sneer. Read the thing the cat gave her? Cat? What cat? Why would she take messages from a cat, she could rip their little heads off--(and leave their entrails on Barbet's fucking doorstep as a calling card before she ripped his head off in kind.)

The large white cat is still sitting nearby, looking bored with the proceedings and Zinc gives it an angry look. It trots up, dropping the scroll near her, nearly rolling its eyes before washing its hands of her nonsense and sauntering away.

She hisses again, irritated by its attitude, but she looks back at the girl suspicious.

"What is it?"

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

She sighs. This isn't turning out to be one of the easy ones.

"Message vaguely explaining things. Uh, the basic rundown is that we've all been kidnapped by some crazy people and put in an alternate dimension zoo thing that's girls only. And we're all supposed to hook up. And yeah, I'm aware that it sounds completely insane."

[jemerite]

Her brows pinch. She once had a very quick mind, and for what she is, she is still exceedingly clever, but she doesn't follow and that annoys her. She should be able to understand, this can't be beyond her comprehension, it's just too simple. He's left her here, he's--

"Kidnapped." He wouldn't. He wouldn't abandon her, she's done everything as he's asked her to, she's lived in this horrible shell, let him paint her humanity on to it so it could mock her day after day with an illusion that was never quite perfect. She wraps her arms around herself, fingers still tense, clawing restlessly at her arms through the fabric of her shirt--(He scolds her, when she hurts herself, but better herself than him.)

"Kidnapped. By... by who? Are you--" Are they meant to be toys? She isn't a toy, Barbet tells her that, sometimes if she's miserable enough. Not a toy, her name is Zinc and she is not a toy.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

Shit. This isn't going well. "Um... well, supposedly the 'Queen of Hearts,' but we don't really know who. I'm another, uh, victim, I guess. My name's Jessica Boyette." She hazards a hand in the new girl's direction.

[jemerite]

Zinc freezes, going very tense and very still, the stillness of something that does not breathe. She looks up at Jessica with dull eyes for a moment before she makes a little motion with one hand, pointing at the girl and her splotches.

"What is wrong with you."

She was never quite a germaphobe, but it was always important to be careful, to have your latest shots. Maybe it doesn't matter anymore, now that she is dead, but she remembers.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

Siiiiiigh. This again. She withdraws the hand and takes a breath.

"They don't know, we gave up on doctors, I was born like this, it's not vitiligo, I'm not albino, and it's not contagious. Anything else?"

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

After decades of training, of being on high alert lest she wind up with guards bearing down on her, Ezio's ears pick up the commotion and her urge to help and to aid has her heading in the direction of the shouts, quiet thump of her feet and rattle of her weapons as she approaches. Her hands are held out in a placating manner; some she has come across who need aid, when in such a state, are likely to lash out and she would rather not have to get physical if she can help it.

"Calma, calma," she says, peering from beneath the pointed cowl of her robe, "I do not believe the cat is the one who is deserving of your anger signorina. Is there anything I can do?"

[[ooc: Calma - calm down, signorina - miss.]]

[jemerite]

This one is human, she knows it, she can smell it, can smell the steel and the leather as well. There is something enticing to both and Zinc's wailing lowers to a quieter murmur of despairing rage as she hunches down into herself, wary and looking exceedingly inhuman in her animal fear.

The woman--(she can smell it)--says something to her in Italian, and it is easy enough to understand, she is not that stupid, not yet.

"Town. I need to go back."

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

Ezio steps past the cat - she's not overly fond of the snotty little things anyway - and keeps herself at arms length just to be on the safe side. Waking up here was an odd experience to her and this girl reminds her of those she has overheard in Rome and other cities with a Templar sway.

"Mi dispiace but I do not believe that leaving the gardens to return to whatever town you must get to is any easy or simple task. I am Ezio Auditore, do you have a name madonna?" A hand reaches out, hovers because not everyone is good with touch, as Ezio has learned but she is tactile usually when she's soothing people be they young boys who fear losing a mother, a man who has lost a wife to the gallows or a courtesan who fears one of her friends poisoned at the hands of a doctor. Still, caution will win out with her when she is removed from her element and it will take another few months before she is fully comfortable as herself here in these gardens.

[jemerite]

"Mi dispiace..." she repeats this distractedly, her mind unraveling it. She enjoys puzzles, and if she were in a better state of mind she would pester Ezio to say more for her. Her brow furrows as she moves on to assessing the rest, that she cannot leave, that she cannot return to town. She notices the hovering hand and stares at it warily, but doesn't flinch.

"What do you mean. Cannot leave?"

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

"It is an apology," she explains, still so used to speaking her own language and being understood first time around that she was having a hard time remembering that here. "I know that this must be upsetting as it is for all of us," perhaps moreso, she has not heard this level of screaming yet even if her time here has been limited, "but a reaction like that...it will not help anyone or yourself any further."

She sighs and adjusts her stance so it's more comfortable, the way she would if she was tracking a target. "These gardens do not seem to have a normal way out and I do not believe that the queen to bring us here would be inclined to let us go so easily."

[jemerite]

Zinc's curiosity piques further, relaxing unfurling from her huddled and aggressive position.

"All of us?" This woman was no Reanimate, if there were others, if this was something familiar to them, then perhaps she'd been wrong. Perhaps Barbet hadn't abandoned her, god she hopes that she was wrong.

"I thought... he'd left me here. To die." She wouldn't starve, she would weaken and deteriorate until her body could no longer hold itself together.

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

"I do not know how many people there are in the gardens but I would hazard that it is no small number. Nowhere near as many occupants as a town or a city but there are many." She gives a hint of a smile then, annoyance flickering at the edges because so much of her life has been out of her hands already that being here does not please her, even if the respite is something she knows better than to take for granted when she has so little of it normally. "I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze, I can help you if I can."

The next words she hears make her frown; she does not like the sound of this, it sounds like men she has hunted through cities who take from the people, who abuse those that are weaker than them and whatever smile was on her face fell away at that.

"Who left you? Who would do something like that?"

[jemerite]

Zinc shakes her head slowly. "He wouldn't..." She says this distractedly, fully processing the idea that there are others who have been taken like her. This one says she will help her, and Zinc didn't even have to ask. That is a relief to her pride, something which has been sorely abused since she took that bullet. She'd died smirking at Isaac Crew, she'd woken up again trembling and screaming. And it was Barbet's fault.

"Barbet wouldn't leave me." She brushes a strand of her hair delicately behind her ear before she looks back up at Ezio with her brown eyes. She offers out her hand, hoping for help back to her feet. She can stand on her own, but it would be an awkward and graceless process. "Have you... really come from Firenze?"

She swings much too easily between her emotions, but for now she is calming down, she takes the time to pronounce her words carefully. It's a bit slow, methodical, but she would prefer to be clear.

[existwithoutme.livejournal.com]

Kuja hears the screaming and is unmoved. How could mere screams move someone like her? Moved or not, she is interested. Pain is associated with sympathy, empathy, and she does crave these things, the ability to experience them more, to experience anything more than the dull, despairing ache she feels most of the time (but not to feel anger--no, not that).

She is curious and selfish then, not concerned, as she seeks the source of the screams and finds the woman kneeling in the grass, among the flowers. It's a pretty sight: greenery, misery, and petals, and she watches it coldly before she makes herself known.

"That won't do you any good," she says.

[jemerite]

Her head whips around quickly, body coiling in on itself like something preparing to strike. Her brown eyes narrow with a hiss.

"Who are you?"

She didn't need to be mocked, it hurt enough as it was. She'd been abandoned, and there was nothing that would change that. Even if she killed him, the satisfaction would be brief, the loneliness total, the descent complete. Without him there is nothing but the animal; there is no use fighting.

[existwithoutme.livejournal.com]

Faced with this bestial behavior, Kuja smiles the arrogant, careless smile of a near-invulnerable construct.

"Ah, a little serpent. How charming."

She follows up her smile with a smoothly practiced, sweeping bow. "I am Kuja. We are all of us trapped in the same bower, and not all the wailing in the world will set us free."

[jemerite]

Zinc's lip curls, still feeling very mocked and resentful, angry and confused. This thing doesn't smell like a human, calls her a serpent and says she's charming, which would be interesting, flattering, on any other day. Instead, she is distracted by this talk of being trapped.

"Trapped where?" Her speech is imperfect, grows slurred and uneven in a pique. "I'm going back. He can't leave me here."

[existwithoutme.livejournal.com]

Kuja, being called upon to explain things? Explanations are so tiresome. Unless they involve her own plans and ideas.

"You needn't worry about him. He's not responsible and likely doesn't realize you've gone." She doesn't know who they're discussing, but it does not matter to her. "This is a temporary trap. As you say, you'll be put right back where you were before, when your time here is done."

[jemerite]

Her brows pinch together, full mouth frowning. Did this thing know Barbet? She doesn't see why it would, and why did it keep saying trapped. She knew all about being trapped. She was trapped in this body, spent her days trapped inside Barbet's studio, trapped by her feelings of hate and adoration for him.

How is this place a trap when there is blue sky overhead.

"I don't understand," she admits bitterly.

[existwithoutme.livejournal.com]

Kuja has never been anything other than trapped (by her maker, in her role as bringer of death)--except for a few perfect, lost moments--but here she is not trapped alone, and she does not know how to feel about that fact. What to think, that is. Her feelings are never so easily dealt with.

In the end, maybe it doesn't matter one way or another.

"This is the realm of a mad and nameless Queen. She spirits us away from our homes to her small, inviolable domain. None enter or leave except at her command, or so it seems. Some speculate that the comings and goings are more random than that, or that the Queen's madness loosens her control over her captives and her world in miniature.

"Perhaps you could say it's like a fairy tale--except it isn't."

[jemerite]

It sounds ridiculous when it's put like that. All Zinc can really focus on is that someone has taken her from Barbet. He hasn't left her, that's all that matters even if she can't wrap her mind around the rest. She doesn't believe in magic, there's no evidence of it in her world and she find fairy tales to be boring and ludicrous.

She stares up at Kuja silently for a moment, her expression very open to the relief she feels, and her lingering uncertainty.

"I thought he'd abandoned me," she says this in a much softer voice than the one she had been snarling with previously. The idea really had hurt her, terribly, she's glad to be rid of it, to blame someone other than the man she loved. He was already to blame for so much she wouldn't forgive.