paradisalogs | Blood hardens in the sand...

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Blood hardens in the sand...

Who: Vicious + Open
What: Wonderful War Flashbacks
When: Now
Where: A disturbed mind
Rating: Pg-13 for now

The world lays before you in a sepia wasteland, the sun a distant spot in the sky, barely showing through thick layers of cloud and smog, leaving everything in perpetual twilight. The wind is a howling thing, ripping at your clothes and hurling grit around everywhere. It's hard to believe that there is anything here, that anything could ever have been alive on this barren, forlorn rock somewhere at the wrong end of the solar system.

But something is. Over the howl of the wind, something roars, and then an explosion rocks the earth. Over a nearby hill comes a scrambling group of men in uniform, guns in hand, fleeing the carnage that lays just beyond, a smoking crater ringed 'round with the bodies of the dead and dying. There's an occasional groan, but no one stops to look back. The men on the hill regroup, shouldering their guns. One tall form, silver hair dull in the poor light, pauses, looks back at the chaos behind him with a blank expression before gesturing to the others. There's a brief pause before the gunfire starts again, and beyond that, the roar of canons take up the call, the wind swirling sand into nearly blinding clouds as all around men meet and clash, kill or are killed, all over an empty waste of sand.

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This nightmare is familiar to Gren. He's lived it in his mind far too often, asleep and awake. He's not even sure which one is happening now, and isn't that a startling mirror to the past?

But he has no time to consider that. He's near the back of the ground, sand slipping under his boots as he scrambles towards them, trying to keep up with Vicious, following him like a beacon in the night. Getting separated is nearly a death sentence in kind of storm. Not as if being sent here was not a mission to purgatory in the first place, but no reason to simply allow death to take you.

A soldier near his shoulder takes a bullet through the head, but he can't even stop to mourn him.

"Vicious, wait!"

He hears the voice and pauses a moment, glancing back. He should stop. This isn't real, after all, he knows that. Titan only lives on in his dreams, and dreams should hold no sway. But then, Gren is as much a part of this dream as anything else, he reasons. He doesn't have to stop. He'll be there, like the shadow he always was in those days, so he keeps on walking.

He keeps moving, knowing that if he loses sight of Vicious he'll never find him again. Getting lost was nearly a death sentence on this planet. If the enemy didn't find you first, the elements would.

Coughing on sand, he races, rolling on the ground as another mortar hits close by. He ignores the screams that follow, glancing only to see the blood from a dismembered leg soaking into the ground.

"Let's go," says a familiar voice and Gren looks up to see Vicious standing there, steely eyed as ever and hand extended.

He's not sure how he got back here so fast, but he takes the hand and allows his comrade to haul to his feet and then follows when the man wordlessly starts walking again.

The sand is blowing harder now, and even the canon fire seems to have broken off in the face of such a storm. Impossible to keep up a fight in this sort of weather, nearly impossible to keep moving at all. It wasn't long before he lost sight around him, nothing but sepia tinted sand in all directions. Another person might have been concerned, but Vicious simply kept walking, in defiance of nature itself.

It's not long before the sound of wind is all he can hear. The ground under his feet suddenly seems to level out, without the slightest hint of shifting sand, then moment later his vision clears. The storm isn't gone - but simply behind him. Ahead is a long dark hallway - the only light from thin windows up near the border of the ceiling, casting white light on sterile polished grey concrete. That light isn't the light of Titan, for sure.

...

Meanwhile, in the desert, Gren is losing ground on Vicious again. He has to shield his eyes to keep the sand out, but hard to keep an eye on his guide at the same time. He glances up at the top of the ridge but can't find the silver-haired man. Was he left behind again?

"Keep up, Gren," says Vicious, suddenly behind him again, and before Gren can react, shoves him hard, sending him rolling down the steep bank of a dune and...onto a hard stone floor?

He looks up, hurt and confused, and finds himself in a room. A courtroom, though more like a tribunal. A seat of judges high above him; a single chair in the middle a few feet away.

"Grencia Mars Elijah Guo Eckener. You've been brought here to answer against the charge of treason..."

The disparate landscapes bleed together in such a way that he doesn't notice the shift until his footsteps are echoing on the floor, no longer muted by the sand. He stop and frowns, trying to place the location as somewhere he knows, but while there is a vague familiarity, he really could be anywhere at all.

His hand drops to the knife at his hip, but no threat presents itself.

The complex Vicious has found himself in seems to have a cold, utilitarian feel to it that screams military, but there are no soldier roaming the halls. However, the farther he progresses, the more the air starts to echo with voices. Mostly indistinct noises of mumbling or crying or screaming.

It won't take long to realize they're coming from behind the doors that line the hallway. They're solid metal, except for a tiny window, showing glimpses of various men dressed in drab prison jumpsuits wandering their rooms with empty-eyed expressions.

....

He shouldn't be surprised, considering the number of times he's dreamed about this, but he still scrambles to his feet in confusion.

"I'm not---"

The voices cut him off. "We have a witness here to testify as to the matter of your guilt."

And then Vicious is stepping out from the shadows. No longer a soldier, but as he'd appeared on Titan.

"I served with this man in the war, and I saw from myself...he's a spy."

Gren watched with horror as Vicious drew his arm, pulling the sword from the sheath at his hip, the blade flashing white in the lights.

"Vicious, no..."

But the man was moving towards him, and Gren did the only thing he could do. Run.

He bolts through a darkened doorway and through hallways he vaguely remembers but doesn't stop to identify. He's not sure where he's running to, if only only away from the nightmare version of his comrade.

And, of course, turns a corner only to find himself staring down the real thing. He skids to a stop, unsure of what to believe. As far as he knows, this could be another trick.

He frowns a bit as he's surrounded by the voices and desperation of others... their weakness is almost tangible, and he finds it distasteful, wants to be free of these hallways lined with mad men bemoaning their fates, but there doesn't seem to be an end to it. Every turn he takes leads down another hall--perhaps the same hall--looping onward, as if trying to trap him.

He was beginning to wonder if he was meant to learn some lesson or wander forever when a familiar figure rounded the corner.

"Gren."

Perhaps he wasn't meant to walk this purgatory alone, after all.

Gren looks...uncertain. Bordering on frightened. Truth and fiction are twisting in his head, making him take a step back. He'd dropped his rifle when he rolled down that dune, but his sidearm is still there, and he's cautiously putting his hand on it.

"Vicious...?"

It was easy enough to forget his surroundings when he could hone in on Gren's reaction, instead. He'd never behaved like that before, though he should have, any number of times.

"You don't trust me?"

This place...this dream...whatever it was...had changed the rules a little. He distrusted his perception more than Vicious himself, but Vicious had twice appeared out of nowhere, and here was again.

"Should I?" he said, cautiously wrapping his hand around the grip of the pistol and eyes narrowed at the silver-haired speculatively.

"No." But Gren should have known that already, and it had never seemed to sink in. That was why they were here, now, he was nearly certain. Gren had trusted him far too much, right to the very end.

"You would say that..."

He narrowed his eyes. Funny, that an answer in the negative made him want to trust Vicious, but here...here he wasn't really sure. It could be another trick.

"Would you rather I left you here?"

Somewhere, somebody screamed, and Gren flinched.

"You could." It was not the most pleasant place to be, but he could certainly endure it. He had been in places far worse than this before. "Are you going to?" Would he walk away and face this place alone, simply because Vicious was no more trustworthy than he'd ever been?

"No," he said. And Vicious was right in that respect. He didn't trust him, and this place was bringing that old fear up the surface. Better to keep an eye on him, he supposed.

"Come on, then. There has to be a way out..."

Vicious arched an eyebrow slightly, but followed along. It was a reversal of roles, to some extent. Gren had always been the one following. But he was willing to go with it, for the time being.

Things had changed since Titan. Since...the first time they were on Titan, at least. Prison had broken him but it'd made him into a person who was capable of pushing back. Not that he always did, but he was fighting to gain control of this situation.

Which was a pointless endeavor here. He should have know that.

But he still has to suck in a breath when the come around a corner and Vicious is standing down the hallway. The other Vicious. The one with the sword.

How interesting, to come face to face with his own doppelganger, not as he saw himself, but as Gren saw him.

"Do you dream of me often?" It was half a jab at Gren and half honest curiosity.

The answer to that was yes, but instead Gren shot a glare at his comrade. He didn't want to talk about that with him. Not right now. How could he even explain the many roles Vicious had taken in his mind over the years? Friend, comrade, enemy,....lover.

He had other concerns at the moment. Namely the flash of a blade at the other end of the corridor.

"Move!"

Gren reversed direction down the other side of the hall, not waiting to see if his comrade was following suit. The other Vicious smiled and advanced.

Vicious didn't share Gren's sense of urgency about the situation... after all, he had no reason to fear himself, and certainly not whatever shadowy version of himself that Gren had created. He knew what was in his own heart and mind. No one else's conjurings would ever compete.

He followed at a slightly more sedate pace, like someone watching a play, waiting to see the outcome of it all.

War is chaos. It is terror and insanity and more her brother's purview than her own. but Delirium has her place, in war. With the shell-shocked, and the broken. She's the horror of war that people don't like to talk about. Both the barrier and the hole.

Standing, surrounded by the swirling sand, it brings Del back to days when the Endless more often walked among the people. A splotch of bare skin and billowing black shirt.

The incongruity catches his eye even in all the dust and he stops. That this isn't real doesn't appear to bother him, or matter much at all. It's a place he's familiar with, a chaos he's at home in.

"You shouldn't be here."

It's an observation, more than anything. The battle is kicking up again and he has men to slay, for no reason other than they are there. He doesn't question this, either.

"No one should be here," she agrees.

The overlap places... Del disliked them most, especially when more than two fit in it.

That might be true, though in a way it seems the perfect place for him. Merciless as the sand all around, it's as though they were made for each other.

"I don't have a choice."

He didn't mean to say it, didn't mean to say anything, but it's the truth. Titan isn't someplace he'll ever escape.

"There are never the right choices." Always never always never all thse choices that didn't really exist.

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Blood hardens in the sand...

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I am so late. Later than late. Life ate me, and I am beyond sorry :(