Log01.entry

[ugh_emotions]

Who: SecUnit, Charles, and eventually other people depending on how things go lots of other people, everyone join in
What: SecUnit checks up Charles, no one has a good time
When: Just before the start of the Story
Where: The stacks
Content warnings: SecUnit getting accidentally bricked

Every time SecUnit or one of its drones caught sight of Charles, he seemed to look even more dead than the last time.

Which was weird. He was already dead (which was also weird), surely he couldn't get any more dead. You were either dead or you weren't.

Whatever. It wasn't SecUnit's problem. Charles wasn't one of its humans. It didn't need to worry about him.

(It worried about him.)

Eventually though, it gets to the point where it can't ignore it anymore, and it stomps over to where Charles is in the Stacks.

"What's wrong with you?" it demands.

Comments

Hiding in the Stacks (OTA)

[hellandbackpack]

SecUnit wasn't the only one hiding in the Library today. But unlike them, Charles hadn't holed up in a bathroom. He hadn't really had the thought process beyond getting away from others, which meant anywhere people might linger was right out. So instead he'd bolted farther into the Stacks. Found the dustiest, most abandoned-seeming aisle he could manage, and tucked himself back into the small corner of the shelf and the wall to one side, knees drawn up, elbows against them, hands buried in his hair.

It wasn't easy to spot him back there, but there were signs of his presence all the same- the shift of lighting, a subtle dimming effect as one of the lights nearest his hiding spot flickers then holds steady again. A thin wet sheen of damp over hardwood floors, and an icy chill to the air. Charles didn't notice the damp, or the cold, but he noticed the flicker of the light, which just encouraged him to draw back a bit more tightly into his hiding spot in response with a grimace, like that might make it stop.

Otherwise, he didn't budge, or speak. He hadn't meant to hurt Rin, or Siobhan. But... that didn't matter, did it? Because he had. He'd fucked up, he wasn't safe to be around.

He wished Edwin were here. Of anyone, he knew Edwin would understand what happened. Would be able to help him fix things. If they were fixable, anyways. And aside from that... just being around him would be comforting. He missed him, and the sensation just had the lights shifting again, from a cozy tone to something a bit colder.

It wasn't like he could leave. They were all stuck here, whether they liked it or not, him included. So all he could think of to do was just... stay away.

Tangled up in his own thoughts as he was, he wasn't really paying attention to his surroundings, or he absolutely would've gone noncorporeal again the second he heard footsteps anywhere nearby. As it was, the edges of his form were a bit blurred all the same, a sure sign of his agitation.

[unsheathedfromreality]

And Illarion was surely careful to make his footsteps audible, for one didn't lightly sneak up on the dead. It rarely went well for either party.

He hadn't been looking for Charles, exactly; he'd been roaming the stacks in the interminable patrol pattern he falls into out of habit when he's out of other things to do. A part of the Library that looked different from the others -- disused, flickering lights, moisture -- stood out enough to warrant investigation.

And that is how he finds Charles, visible through the unsolid, flatter things around him but still mysteriously opaque to Illarion's ((out))-eyes. (He wonders, briefly, if that means his ((outself's)) visible to the boy, in turn. Sets the idea aside for later.) He considers the situation for a half-second, then paces over to a nearby bookshelf he can crouch down beside and put his back to.

Pulls out his copy of the recommended reading and thumbs it open to the middle, skimming the text with relative disinterest.

"How long are you hiding for?" he finally asks, turning a page. (The voice might be familiar, with "Forster Green's" awful echoes and undercurrents.)

[hellandbackpack]

Charles heard the footsteps but at first he didn't quite realize what they were. Not until it was too late- the other had spotted him clearly, if the way he just settled down... with a book?

That was a bit strange. The teen glanced from under his hands towards him, brows furrowing as if he couldn't quite figure out why they were there. It helped that they weren't obviously focused on him. Made existing near someone else for even a moment a bit more bearable as he tried to sort what to do. Pretend he was still alone? Go invisible and find somewhere else? Was there anywhere else?

Considerations that were put on hold when the familiar voice spoke up. Earning a slow blink as Charles' mind quickly put a voice to a face. Not the face he'd seen before but then that had been in a Story.

"Dunno," He admitted finally, with a faint little shrug. "Didn't really think that far ahead."

[unsheathedfromreality]

"Still kicking yourself for hurting Rin, or have you moved on past that?"

The shrike turns a page of the book, frowning faintly down at it. For a story in the tradition of the dragon-bride, it's not as engaging as he'd expect. No risk of anyone losing anything, whether it's a mate or self-control.

Solving what's got Charles exiling himself in a miserable little corner -- or at least, nudging the kid toward a solution -- is eminently more worthy than reading this. But the Assistants had said learning to anticipate a story would help him resist it... And as one of the dead, boredom doesn't really signify. Only orders, and their priority.