mods of the vestige. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vestigemods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
vestigelogs2020-10-08 12:21 am
vestigemods) wrote in vestigelogs2020-10-08 12:21 am
(mini-event) IS THE DOCTOR IN?
IS THE DOCTOR IN?
OCTOBER 8TH
► SEMANTIC OVERVIEW
- This mini-event takes place in the hospital (town location 5), also featured in the dreamscape of the latest Test Drive Meme. The hospital supposedly has three floors + a basement:
- 03 - This uppermost floor appears to be a regular modern hospital wing untouched by apocalyptic disaster, with various tidy patient rooms + an empty nurse's stand. Further down the hallways sit various offices. At a glance, it's difficult to tell from this floor that the hospital is run-down at all... Aside from the way the stairs have crumbled away, at least.
- 02 - Good question. you can't even fucking find the second floor. The elevator doesn't stop there, and there's no door on the wall in the stairwell where a second floor entry should be. What a shame - the signs say that's where you'd find the cafeteria.
- 01 - Basically what you see in the header pic: a very run-down hospital floor, consisting of messy/dirty patient rooms, abandoned nurse's stations, and a check-in/check-out desk (with the corresponding front door, currently jammed but not locked). This floor also has a trio of operating rooms, but these seem to be locked up tight... A fact which some might consider a blessing in disguise.
- B1 - Primarily of interest is the morgue / autopsy room (powered + in functional condition), but this floor also contains locker rooms, a laundry room, a break room, and a handful of other rooms with locked doors and covered windows that Trace doesn't want to make shit up for just yet. Each end of the hospital has an emergency exit door, unlocked from both the inside and outside.
FLOOR-BY-FLOOR OVERVIEW (DROP-DOWN)
Exit/entrances include the main entrance (floor 01, unlocked but jammed and needs to be opened via strength) and the emergency exits (floor B1, unlocked and unimpeded).
FLOOR 3 ► LEAVING SO SOON? YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DISCHARGED
WAKING UP
- You wake in a clean white bed to the overly-hygienic scent of fake wildflowers and the morning sun filtering in through the windows. You're in a hospital room, a visiting chair at bedside, a television hanging on the adjacent wall. Perhaps you're in a private room and can wake at your own leisure. Perhaps your room is shared, and someone else is waking up in their own bed on the opposite side of the cloth divider.
You have no memory of how you arrived here in this room, nor are you entirely sure where this is. For most, a glance out the window is all it takes to get some semblance of a clue - the town's skyline stretches out before you, landmarks recognizable but unfamiliar from what appears to be your third-floor height.
At the end of the bed, you might just find your file. At least, it seems like your file - it lists your name, one or more injuries you don't recall ever having (or perhaps injuries you suddenly have but don't recall ever receiving), and a brief but alarming summary of the cause of the injuries. That's the worst part, the summary. It's almost always something you don't want to hear - you're careful and the injury was borne of recklessness, you value your mother most of all and were stabbed by her hand, or any number of possibilities all written down in carefully clinical terms. If you've woken up alone in a shared room, you might also find a loved one's file attached to the adjacent bed, similarly concerning in content and with no loved one in sight to reassure you that the tale the document tells is a lie.
Outside of your room is a hall with many other such rooms, their occupants stirring now just as you are. A nurse's station sits nearby, thoroughly abandoned. Just beyond that is the doors to the elevator and the stairwell.
But leaving this place isn't quite so easy.
Calling the elevator earns a polite ding! before the elevator doors open to reveal an empty shaft, cables extending downward to indicate that the actual elevator lingers far below. The stairs aren't much better - you have six, maybe seven stairs attached to the stairwell landing before a section seems to have crumbled away, picking up again against the opposite side of the stairwell a good fifteen feet farther down.
Those who can fly or even hover may have no trouble at all. For everyone else? Perhaps you can set to work on figuring out a way to climb down... Or maybe, with luck, someone who woke up in the basement might elevator their way up to your rescue.
THE HALLWAYS
- Or, rather than beating your head against the metaphorical wall that is finding a way down from the third floor, perhaps you decide to explore the hallways. Maybe you think there might be another way out! (Hospitals don't just have one stairwell right? That's a fire hazard.) Or maybe you just want to know what else exists on this floor, for the sake of scavenging or even for your own curiosity.
The hallways are, for their part, all very much the same - but those who may have experienced this place in a dream will at once notice the differences. These hallways are well-lit, the room doors are largely unlocked (mostly rooms like the ones you woke up in, with the occasional supply closet), and no matter how far you walk there's no strange sense of distortion driving you to turn back.
At the furthest reach of the hallway in each direction (the points of the H that makes up the hospital's shape), you'll find a host of small offices. Most are unlocked, and the filing cabinets within contain a number of patient files... Some of which you may even recognize, the information within matching that which you gleaned from one of the spirits last month, were you the sort to try to chat. Many of them, it seems, were once patients here, though this is hardly the morgue and none of these files list any sort of cause of death. This is true of each of the third-floor wings except the northwestern-most branch - there, the offices have long since been emptied, cabinets empty of files, desks void of any long-abandoned signs of life. A single locked door sits at the end of the hall, shades drawn across the small door-window. A dim light glows inside.
FLOOR 1 ► THAT'S A YIKES FROM ME
WAKING UP (CW: NEEDLES IN ¶2)
- Those who woke on the third floor woke somewhere clean, somewhere adjacent to peaceful. Those who wake on the first floor, however, have no such experience. Though you wake in a hospital room, arguably even on what was once a hospital bed, that's where the resemblances end.
In sharp contrast with those awakening almost pleasantly two stories up, you wake exhausted and sore in the joints, as if gripped by the early signs of some sort of flu. And that's those who are lucky. Many wake into a world made hazy by anesthesia which has only just begun to wear off, or perhaps even still linked to an IV filled with a questionable unknown substance. Yikes. Might want to hurry up and deal with that.
The condition of the room itself is far different than those upstairs, too. It's dusty, even smelling of mildew - or perhaps that's just the bed on which you've awoken. The room looks almost ransacked, cabinets half-open, medical supplies and utensils strewn about the unwashed floor. Rust dots any metal surface in sight, and no wonder, considering the various points of visible water damage along the ceiling and walls. If the lights in your room function at all, it's just one flickering fluorescent... Otherwise, the only light washes in through the dirty window and (much dimmer) from the dim and similarly-unsteady fluorescents lining the hallway outside the door to your room.
It's hardly a place that anyone would wish to stay in for long. In fact, you may be on your way out the door before you notice even the half of the health code violations in your immediate vicinity - but one item might catch your eye before you go. A file, dusty but conspicuously undamaged in contrast with the rest of the room. Perhaps it's on the countertop nearby, or on the floor next to an upturned medical station nearby. Some may not have files at all, a mercy considering what's inside: Uncensored procedural pictures of some sort of invasive surgery you don't recall ever having. No, wait - the memory is filtering back to you, extremely hazy but present, as if you woke briefly during that procedure before falling unconscious again. A search of your own body shows no sign whatsoever that such a surgery ever occurred. Was it real, or are you imagining it?
Either way, it's time to get the hell out of here.
THE HALLWAYS?
- The hallway outside of your room is in similar ruin, covered in dust and dirt and mold, furniture upturned, wallpaper peeling and in some places even ripped away. A nurse's station sits abandoned, leaving you and (by the sounds of it) any number of others to wake up in alarm and distress and sort through your surroundings alone. Or... not quite alone, I suppose. You do have each other.
Follow the hallway in one direction and you'll find the main hospital entrance. The front door itself seems to be unlocked, but the automatic-opening mechanism isn't really functioning and it's... a little bit jammed into place. Might need a bit more arm strength (or a helpful co-abductee) to get that open. Otherwise, the area has an intake desk in predictably poor shape, next to which sits a stairwell and elevator. The elevator sits on your floor, waiting to take you either up or down... And believe it or not, it's the better choice, what with the stairwell missing about fifteen feet of stairs just below the third floor. You might also notice that neither the stairs nor the elevator seem to stop on the second floor. Huh. I wonder what's up with that?
Venture further into the array of first-floor hallways and you'll honestly just find more of the same thing you awoke to but often in even worse shape, walls crumbling away between rooms, floors stained with dried blood. Down one branch of the hospital's H sits a trio of operating rooms, but the doors are locked, the rooms inside entirely dark.
BASEMENT ► DOES IT HELP IF WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD?
THE FRIDGE
- Here, you wake in the dark and the cold.
The dark is absolute, and unless your eyes are especially keen, you'll need to use your hands to get a bearing on your surroundings - and once you do, well. The news isn't great. You've awoken in what feels like a coffin-sized metal container, cold against the inexplicably bare skin of your back. If such a thing exists in your world, you might recognize that the container is chilled artificially.
Maybe you're trapped altogether, with no choice but to shout and bang on the walls and hope someone outside is close enough to hear - because unlike in the warped version of this very building that some walked in a dream, each and every one of these cells has been diligently sealed. But drawing attention may not be so easy... As you begin to bang and shout, you'll hear similar banging from your left and your right, from above and below you, the room outside your cell filled with a cacophony of fist-against-metal with nothing but your muffled shouting to guide whoever is nearby to the correct cell.
With luck, a rescuer (whoever that may be) drags the floor of your cell out into the open air of a dingy run-down morgue. You were trapped in cold storage, and here in the light you find that you've been dressed down to nothing but a flimsy backless hospital gown, a tag tied to your toe. Upon closer inspection, the toe tag lists your name, where you're from, and... a cause of death? Since when were you dead? Or perhaps you already knew you were dead and the cause of death isn't quite what you recall. Either way, the contents of your toe tag are disconcerting at best, abjectly alarming at worst.
Around you, the other locked fridge cells have gone quiet. It's almost as if their residents were raising a fuss specifically to keep your rescuer from finding you, giving up once their cause proves fruitless. Opening these cells will find corpses in varying stages of decomposition... Certainly in no state to make such a ruckus.
But on to more practical matters: Your clothes and belongings can be found in the laundry room next door. Let's see if you can make it that far without showing a friend or stranger the entirety of your bare ass.
THE TABLE (CW: MEDICAL/SURGICAL GORE)
- Or perhaps you don't wake in cold storage. Perhaps you wake on the autopsy table itself, one of three or four spaced evenly under the flickering fluorescents of the hospital morgue. A thin layer of paper covers your otherwise nude body, and beside the table, a tray of autopsy tools (some bloody, some supposedly clean) on a rusty cart within arm's reach.
An eight-inch-long rectangle has been cut from the front of your paper gown, and you're quick to see why: Some of you have a 6-inch-long, clumsily-stitched surgical slice down the center of your chest, almost as if an autopsy was attempted but quickly patched up before it could be finished. The rest of you aren't fortunate enough to have the stitches - your surgical slice is still open and bleeding mildly. Whether stitched or unstitched, the wound isn't any kind of life-threatening, having missed all vital organs and arteries... Not that it's terribly pleasant regardless.
If you (or a helpful friend or stranger) want to patch that shit up, there are plenty of supplies to bandage the area for now, or even a needle and surgical thread to stitch that up properly. Shame there's no anesthetic.
Once you've achieved enough relative chill to actually care about your prevailing near-nudity, your clothes and belongings can also be found in the laundry room next door. Maybe try not to bleed on them?
MOD NOTES
- This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to October's Is The Doctor In? mini-event on the 8th. Go ahead and utilize vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make - characters inside the hospital are welcome to find their phone on their person, at bedside, or somewhere nearby.
- You're welcome to have your characters visit and explore the hospital on any other day henceforth, since this is now an unlocked location and will be added to the Locations page, but this is the only day on which people will be waking up here. Please utilize the October Catch-All for all non-event hospital threads!
- Characters who don't wake up here can still get involved if they have some reason to come join the fun. Maybe someone from inside texts them for help, or maybe they're walking down the street and see movements in the window of a building they know is supposed to be locked. Go ahead and wing it re: why they're there, honestly.
- Most of the accessibility obstacles are meant to induce drama, not limit threading capability - as such, feel free to (for example) assume that someone has already brought the elevator up to 03 or pried the front doors open on 01 if you don't want to fuck with those obstacles in your own threads!
- A few bits of exploratory intrigue have been peppered through these prompts. One of them is specifically what I was referring to when I mentioned 'exploratory subplots' back in the August Bulletin. If your character would poke around in suspicious places, by all means, hit me up on the questions top-level for more info!
- Being ambiguous about this since the prompt itself was under a CW, but if you opted into the 'questionable unknown substance' aspect of Floor 1's waking-up options and actually want something to come of it (as opposed to it just being some sort of alarming fake-out), hit me up and I'll toss you some side effects.
- If you want to have your character wake up via the fridge prompt in B1 but either don't want to fuck with a rescuer or want them to be able to get out and help someone on the table, feel free to say that the morgue fridge cell doors open on their own after a while, averaging on an hour but I'm not picky.
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Jiang Cheng | The Untamed
exploring the basement - OTA
His mind still disturbed by the events of the first floor, he is twitchy, jumping at every sound or when he believes to see a flicker of light in the darkness. When he turns, all he finds are more ominous shadows amidst the flickering hospital lightning.
Wei Wuxian and he hadn't found his sword anywhere so he is wielding the largest scalpel he could find, a rusty thing with ominous bloodstains that look disturbingly fresh.
There is a noise louder than the others, like something - someone ? - banging against something metallic followed by clattering just as he passes by a door. Jiang Cheng freezes. ]
Show yourself! [ he barks, his voice echoing in the hallway.
His eyes flicker this way and that, uncertain. Did the noise come from beyond the door or down the hallway? ]
basement
The demand for him, or someone, to show themselves has Song Lan stepping cautiously from the room he'd been exploring, finding himself meet another familiar face. One he hadn't seen in person in many many years.
He bows, but as he straightens concern furrows his brows. Lips part as if to speak, but no words come. Instead he'll purse his lips before holding his sword to the young sect leader, offering it. Who knows what lurks in these halls. That scalpel won't do anything against any sizeable foe. Lucky for Song Lan he currently still carries two swords.
Eventually he'll return Shuanghua to Xingchen, but for now it was still in his possession. Nodding at Jiang Cheng he urges him to take Fuxue.]
Re: basement
He stares at him in wide-eyed startlement for a moment longer before he catches himself, bowing as well, murmuring hushed greetings while his eyes furtively look down the hallway - for he assumes Song Lan's quiet to be out of caution. ]
Thank you [ he murmurs as he accepts the sword offered to him, all too grateful to swap in the rusty scalpel for something far sharper and more suited to battling... well, whatever might have taken them to this abandoned hospital. Fuxue feels unfamiliar in his hands and he finds himself missing Sandu dearly but a spiritual sword is a spiritual sword and to have another cultivator's weapon entrusted to him is no small honor. ] Thank you [ again, more hushed, then he focuses on the task at hand and sizing up Song Lan. ] Are you unhurt?
no subject
Doesn't mean it won't change.
Song Lan does his best to avert his eyes from the sect leader's uh state of undress. It was the same as what he'd found Xingchen in, so clearly not Jiang Cheng's fault.
At the question he'll nod. He goes to draw Xingchen's blade but then decides against it. He'll try something different to communicate. Shifting to bring a hand towards the nearby wall, he'll write the same way he would have with his sword in the dirt. Now just with fingers against the white wall. It helps the words stand out.]
And you?
[The words fade after a time, letting Jiang Cheng read them first.]
You will need clothes.
Let's find something.
no subject
I know! I know! But I couldn't find anything that isn't torn or bloody yet! [ He is just going to, umm, be careful that he walks without showing off his backside in the meantime. The best he can do for now. ]
Have you come across anything? Even if it's just something like this but better. [ Better, as in not being simply tied up at the back with a few strings, or showing his legs. ]
no subject
He shakes his head at the question.]
Empty halls.
Rooms of questionable use.
And Xiao Xingchen.
[One of these things is not like the other-]
His clothes were in a nearby room.
Maybe you will be so lucky.
no subject
Naturally, there is nothing and no one to discover, but there is another part to what he said which is useful. ]
I woke up a floor above but didn't find any clothes there. Maybe I'll have more luck down here. [ A moment's hesitation, then. ] Would you accompany me in my search?
no subject
We parted ways to help others unfortunate in here.
Meeting up at the entrance should we find it.
[Don't worry Jiang Cheng, you're other teenage hero won't see you like this. Maybe.
Asked if he'll accompany the sect leader, Song Lan nods. He'd had every intention of it any way.]
no subject
Since he has Song Lan's agreement to accompany him, he starts to lead them further into the maze of dimly-lit corridors. There are noises sometimes, like something skittering, and the flickering lights hiss and crackle sometimes as they struggle with breaking down completely. All these ominous noises have him on edge, sometimes jumping at shadows only to find himself alone with only Song Lan for company. ]
Maybe we can find clues what happened here. Or what they did with us.
no subject
It's much more than that. In fact he can even understand that lives would be in danger if a sect leader pushed back against the standard, but change would never happen if everything stayed the same. It's a difficult dance.]
There are many strange contraptions in the rooms.
They seem like devices for torture possibly.
[He's not going to assume, but...]
Xingchen was trapped in a strange metal hole in the wall.
There were many more.
Some had corpses in them.
[Song Lan will not think of the irony in that. He won't.]
no subject
He thinks about Song Lan's explanation for a moment, visibly shuddering at the thought of being locked up along with corpses. ]
That's a gruesome thing to do to a man. Our captors are vile, and they have a sick sense of humor. [ His lips twist into a sneer. ] If I ever get my hands on any of them, we will see who ends up a corpse.
[ But! That's not the point either. The point being that he still needs clothes and to find out why he is even here. ]
Let's find one of these rooms with the corpses. Maybe examining them will tell us how they died. I... Something strange happened to Wei Wuxian and I. They seem to have been interested in golden cores.
no subject
They must be brought to justice.
[However that may be. In his youth he'd have been against the idea of death as a means of justice, but... after so much suffering and senseless murder could have been stopped, just by killing one man. His stance on the matter has shifted.
Definitely a case by case thing.]
Downstairs. Follow me.
[Maybe if they're lucky they'll find clothes for Jiang Cheng down there as well. Song Lan will lead the way, having come from down there not long ago. He wonders how Xingchen fairs in all if this... he wonders if he'll actually see him again.
This place could be playing a cruel truck on him after all. Once they're downstairs he does stop to write out:]
You mentioned golden cores.
That you and Master Wei had something done to you.
Do you think the Techs want to harness that energy?
no subject
They pause so Song Lan can write out his thoughts about the golden core and he hums in acknowledgement as he moves to take the lead now, aiming for a metal door that looks particularly solid. That looks like a place you would be storing corpses behind, he thinks, and maybe clothes. ]
I... We hadn't thought of that, to be honest. I was so appalled and confused by the pictures that I didn't know what to think at all, and Wei Wuxian was shaken, too. But now I'm wondering. It is striking that they brought so many cultivators when from every other world...
[ The door is indeed as heavy as it looks and beyond lies an empty metal table, and on it, bundled up, something purple. ]
These are my clothes!
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
closed to Wei Wuxian, 1st floor
[ Jiang Cheng awakens to darkness - a fuzzy, wavering darkness - and the noise of something skittering in the distance - tiny feet? Many tiny feet? There is a squeak, then lights flicker up, a cold, wan light that barely holds enough strength to throw shadows on grimy walls splattered with red.
Or maybe that's his eyes. Maybe the world in front of his eyes is red.
He squeezes his eyes shut again, tries to fight off the fuzziness, the pounding headache, the nausea.
Belatedly, he realizes that he isn't wearing his clothes. His feet are cold. He sits up abruptly, fighting off the nausea and dizziness and then screams at a sudden yanking pain in his arms, screams again when he finds a needle in his arm, connected to a bottle of some sludgy brown-almost-black substance. He doesn't know that the needle is far thicker than any IV needle would normally be, barely understands that the moldewy hell he finds himself in would have been a proper hospital bed before maybe 20 years of decay and rust and rats making a bed of it, doesn't understand that the dusty green thing splattered with old blood stains he is wearing is a hospital gown.
All Jiang Cheng knows is he wants to get out of here.
So he yanks at the needle in his arm and all but throws himself from the bed. Beneath him, his weak legs give out and he crashes to the floor, an arm managing to hold on to something - the rusty IV stand - but it doesn't hold his weight and just clatters to the floor with a noise that sounds deafening to his ears.
And Jiang Cheng screams. ]
rolls in fashionably late, cw: surgical gore i guess
so he stands - and suffice to say the simplicity of those the words vastly understates the experience. his legs feel very much like uncooked dough, boneless and a bit clammy, but this doesn't seem to stop them from holding him upright no matter how strongly the floor seems to pull at him. thank the gods for legs (the leg god, if there is such a thing. is there such a thing?) - that floor seems spectacularly unclean, and this coming from a man who found it perfectly acceptable to host guests for tea in a cave. but where to now? out, away, but how? the concept of doors isn't quite here yet - the door is just one more overly dirty thing, and his eyes scan the room for literally anything that is not covered in mold or grime until, aha! a thick tan paper, folded around other papers. it has a name on it, one which might perhaps be wei wuxian? letters are also still a bit beyond him.
pictures, however, are not.
and that's precisely what he finds inside the folder - pictures, and at first he isn't entirely sure what it is that he's seeing, brows furrowing, eyes squinting as he tries to parse the greyscale shapes, but - ah. it's upside-down.
perhaps it should have stayed that way, as the moment it's right-side up his stomach fills with a twisting unease. it's him, right there in the picture, there's his face. but he's asleep, asleep and covered in some sort of sheet, up to his neck, but there's a hole cut in the sheet and a hole cut in him and -
he drops the picture to the floor. he doesn't want to hold that one anymore. it doesn't occur to him to discard the whole folder. that they'd all be the same, these pictures... but then he looks at the next. it's the same scene, but this time a closer view of the alarming hole in his lower abdomen. this time, they seem to be- putting something inside the hole? taking something out of it? something which glows around the hands and arms which obscure it, and his stomach twists harder still. his golden core. but these white-robed men didn't remove it, and it certainly wasn't taken out here. that's nonsense. wen qing did that. why do these pictures say she didn't?
that picture is discarded next, and this time, he hopes for another. perhaps this one will help him reach some comprehension, some sense of how they could take a golden core he never had - but this next picture isn't of him. it's jiang cheng this time. he's also sliced open in just the same way, but this picture leaves little ambiguity in the way the golden core is being lifted from within him.
that's when, somewhere outside of this room, jiang cheng screams.
a panic grips his chest, his lungs, his throat, burning away at the wary confusion and everything else he might consider feeling like fire to paper. the folder drops from his hand, and he's throwing himself into motion now, lurching half-balanced out into the hallway to cast panicked eyes to the left, to the right, which way did it come from?! another scream, and he's moving again before it quiets, quickly enough to lose his footing and catch himself roughly on hands and knees before scrambling back to his feet to sprint clumsily off down the row of doorways. )
Jiang Cheng? ( into the first room, but no, it's empty. is he gone already? is wei ying too late? no, a different room, he has to be in a different room - the next one, in fact, the crash and a third awful cry greet him just as he rounds the corner. wei ying doesn't quite consider how to slow to a stop, instead just kind of stumbling to his knees beside where a-cheng lies on the floor as he chokes out a breath both relieved and dismayed. this isn't okay yet. he doesn't know yet what they've done to him. )
Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng - ( to get his attention, as if his haphazard arrival wouldn't have done so already. there's a clumsy slur to his words, too, more so even than the few times he has been properly drunk. ) Did they- ( the rest of the question doesn't quite come, his eyes flickering down toward the man's stomach and back to his face. he's pale, terribly pale. that's a terrible sign. ) They can't just steal a man's core away, we'll get it back, do you believe me? We will.
( unbeknownst to him, his hand still grips the last picture he saw, crumpled terribly now but perhaps able to shed light on what exactly wei wuxian is so panicked about, if jiang cheng thinks to notice it. that very same hand is bleeding a bit at the knuckles, which were bent when he caught himself roughly and thoughtlessly on both hands.
(he's also just careened through the hall in a backless gown, but there's no need to speak of that.) )
no subject
He moves to shake his head but thinks better of it when the merest movement of his head sends another nauseous wave of dizziness through him. All he dares do is lick his lips and squint at Wei Wuxian. ]
My core? [ His voice is raw and there is a flash of memories - he is laying on his back, a bright lamp over his head blinding him and his mouth wide open in a scream that makes his throat bleed. ] What are you...?
[ Still on hands and knees, he tries to scoot closer towards Wei Wuxian, his hands scrabble over the floor trying to reach for him though all he ends up touching is one of the photographs and he looks down, forcing his eyes to make sense of what he sees, there is the bloody gaping emptiness of a body cut open, gaping wide, golden light cradled in hands in bloodied white gloves...
He feels an echo of pain in his lower dantian, something as if a blade cuts through skin and flesh, as if hands yank at the cut and lay bare what lies beneath... just like on that photograph... The phantom sensation is nothing like the burn of having his golden core melted and yet it still leaves him trembling. ]
Why do you have that?
[ There were better questions to ask. Where they are, why they are here, why Wei Wuxian is only wearing a skimpy joke of a robe but none of this matters as much as the feeling of flesh parting. ]
no subject
Where I woke up, ( he says, trying to separate his words coherently so jiang cheng can understand. ) There were more. Too many, ( he doesn't quite realize his arm has curled low around his stomach, almost defensively. his fist isn't the only thing shaking - he's shaking in his entirety at this point, but he doesn't realize that part either. ) I-, I didn't look at all of them. ( it didn't feel as important as finding him, as if there were any chance wei ying wouldn't be much, much too late. )
no subject
Even at a time when Wei Wuxian was a nightmare to everyone else, Jiang Cheng had trusted him to battle his nightmares. ]
We can go. We can go there. We can get the other pictures. We can. [ He presses a hand against his aching temples, presses his fingers in, trying to use sheer willpower to force away the pounding pain, the fuzziness, the weakness in his limbs... ] Just as soon as I can... Just as soon as I can. [ As soon as he can trust his legs to carry him, or the floor not to tilt beneath him.
He forces his eyes to focus on Wei Wuxian and his pain because he is cradling his belly right where Jiang Cheng feels his own phantom pain, phantom touch, the whisper of... He shakes his head furiously and grits his teeth against the memory of hands reaching deep into him, scooping... He forces back a whimper and tries to focus his eyes on Wei Wuxian. He reaches out, clawing at his protective arm, wanting to see, to reassure himself there is no open gaping wound on Wei Wuxian's belly like his own mind still insists he should be having one, the disorientation of almost being sure that any moment now if he just leans forward the slightest bit, his guts will spill out as if he had been sliced open. ] Are you hurt? Are you? Did they get you?
no subject
but it doesn't even matter if they've taken jiang cheng's core, which he still doesn't really have an answer on one way or another and he's trying to figure out how to loop back to that through his mind full of static and - oh, all of a sudden his arm's being grabbed, eyes sharply refocusing on the hand as he lets out a shaky breathed - ) No no no - A-Cheng, A-Cheng, don't- ( but his arm doesn't seem to remember how to resist, letting jiang cheng pull it away just as he'd let jiang cheng do most anything these days - and surely enough, there's a clear absence of any sort of blood or the thickness of bandaging.
'did they get you?' ) I don't know. ( a helpless, lost sort of whisper before his brain has properly caught up to his mouth, but then it does and he's blinking, lifting a shaking hand into view to glance at the blood on it. ) I'm-, it's all. Shallow, I think. I don't feel anything. ( which isn't a miswording, he truly doesn't feel much of anything, still far too numbed to properly tally any sort of wounds.
but then those shaking hands fumble to wrap around his brother's wrists, stilling them so the man will pay attention as half-pleading eyes lift to his and wei ying implores, ) Do you have it? Did they-... ( a glance over to the picture, too brief to actually see any of it before his eyes return to search jiang cheng's. ) Tell me you still have it.
no subject
[ And that's not fair, he knows it even now - Wei Wuxian had said that he doesn't feel anything, and he would feel the gaping absence of his core, he would feel this emptiness that leaves you chilled to the bone. He would know it, it would be impossible to miss but...
Why can't he simply say so? Why can't he just once do what Jiang Cheng asks of him? Why can't he just once let himself be worried for?
Jiang Cheng edges back a little, trying to bring distance between them where a moment before he had tried to get closer. ] I know where my core is, it is yours I'm worried for, you idiot!
no subject
the rest of jiang cheng's words are little more than a distant echo in his mind as the slightest bit of moisture leaks out at the corner of each closed eye. but he has to answer, doesn't he? a-cheng will keep growling at him if he doesn't. ) I- ( but how do you answer something you didn't even hear? he feels like it'd be easy any other time, but it slips through his fingers now like sand. (fingers which, slightly beyond his conscious realization, now shakily grip handfuls of whatever lies on the floor, his weight supported on the heels of each palm).
he shakes his head, the tiniest motion. ) I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm- Ask me again. I wasn't listening.
no subject
They are too far away now, he realizes with further frustration, by drawing back he had denied himself the opportunity to force the answers out of Wei Wuxian by simply shaking them out of him.
So he lets himself half lean, half fall forward, trusting his hands to catch on to Wei Wuxian's shoulders and for him to permit the touch so he can shake him as trembling fingers dig in. ]
Your core, you idiot! I want to know if they messed with your core!
no subject
his core. 'i want to know if they messed with your core!' ) They didn't! ( the words fire back quickly now, in case that makes the shaking stop. ) It's- nothing's different, everything feels the same. ( and it sounds genuine enough, because it is. they didn't mess with his core, and everything does feel the same. )
no subject
And thus, he accepts it - for now, at least. Everything is the same. That will have to do. He slumps for real now, letting the tension bleed out of his body even as his fingers dig harder into Wei Wuxian's shoulders in desperate relief. ]
Good. Good. That's good. [ He looks at him earnestly, his eyes wide and intent, almost panicked still. ] I need to know that your core hasn't been harmed, that they didn't... [ There is the sensation of hands reaching into him again... ] Nobody should ever do that to you.