[Log] Catchism: True Colours Manifest.

[catch]

[ ed: Unfortunate. Regretful. ]



<@Tennant> Every step is arduous, every movement retching agony, a burning claw that tore up from his groin, through the pit of his emptied stomach, squeezing his lungs so that only short and raspy breaths escaped. Remembered pain. Real pain, from an unreal place. Shirt strings left loose, buttons undone, without shoes and the mess of red hair alight in the late afternoon sun, he soldiered on with focus, determination, madness.The wind blew and his hair danced like fire, his shirt whipped about his lean frame and in the distance birds flapped their wings, deer ran about a field, the trees swayed and the sun inched lower. Swelling in the sky, a golden glob ever so close to the far off mountains behind which it would inevitably set. Busy with itself, the world continued on and none of it mattered. Fingers slid against one another, the texture of it so familiar it is nearly tangible. Again and again the motion is repeated, as if in doing so it might materialize in his hands. Again and again he goes through this action until his fist closes and sets itself against the wood of the door. His feet had carried him, he had fought past all the pain to come to this small shack and it is a heavy, burdened rap. The pauses between each knock are long, every fall, thick and pained. “Catch,” the first words he’s spoken aloud since waking come out softer than he means, his voice breaking. “Catch!”

<Catch> There have been many fists against his door of late. Many poundings, summons, names. Come to the door, Catch. It is about fires, Catch. It is a fire outside his door now. Catch had eaten, and had lain in uneasy fidgeting on his bed, his body weary but his mind cast far, wandering, wanting to delve into the woods instead of lay on old quilts and cotton-stuffed burlap. It was a fine bed, but he had lain on finer. He had been taken on finer, and he doesn't know why the memory comes to him, now, moments before there is a fist on the door. It has thrown him out of sorts, caused his great limbs to shake as he comes to the door, and twists the handle - opens it, to see a setting sun on short, wild hair, and his eyes are seized by the fire in it.

<@Tennant> Equally wild eyes meet those of the madman; perhaps surprised to have actually found him. But little care is given to this man’s state, for he himself is driven, determined and mad. Despite the tendrils of pain, ripping through every muscle his movement is quick. Whatever fabric lies near the madman’s throat is grasped with white knuckled fists. Like a battering ram he will grasp him and lunge forward, lifting and pushing with what strength remained.

<Catch> Catch is a solid wall. That is his appearance, a stoic, immovable object, a tall, shoulder-stooped slab of stone. That is how men see him, and, perhaps sometimes, that is how Catch could be. A rock, a mountain. Caught by Tennant's hair, caught by Tennant's friendship, Catch can do little more than gaze at that hair, like fire, even as the man's fist finds the loose throat of his cotton shirt, even as he thrusts, with all his might. And Catch falls under him. Inside the shack, there is little where two men - one tall and lanky, the other tall and broad - to go, and Catch's back slams first into the hard, well-carved table, a sharp pain along his kidneys and spine, and he utters a single, animal noise of pain, his eyes wide, now, not on Tennant's hair, but on his face. Every inch of him should be a surprise, but it is not. Sweat stands on his skin, and he remembers well what he had been waking-dreaming, what he had been thinking, and his face pales in the light of a dim, tin lantern. "Ser Tennant -"

<@Tennant> It didn’t matter what Catch looked like, or felt like. The rage, the pain, the very violation of his mind has the force of blind anger behind it. There is no where to go, no where to move and so he shakes his fists before his hands grasp either side of the man’s face. “What did you… Why!”6 Yelling despite their close proximity, sweat and spit fly free, his eyes wide and nearly frantic.

<Catch> Why. Why. Tennant's palms burn against his head, gripped by a madman, one as mad as he. Catch stares at him, unable to look away, doe-like eyes wide and frightened. And he, too, wonders why, why, but he does not give voice to it, because he is thoroughly frightened. He imagines Tennant's hair like a brand of flame, come to set him alight. "It w-w-wasn't me," he cries, he lies. "I'm, I'm sorry - I was here, I was here!" The horn pulsed, under the bed, nestled against the armless grasp of a mannequin. It laughed in Catch's head, and the addled man grits his teeth against it. "Please, Ser Tennant -" It happened to me, he does not say. It happened to me, too.

<@Tennant> "It was,” his hands tighten, his eyes grow wide and the red-haired man can only stare at Catch as if looking harder might dig up some unspoken truth. Reveal his lie. “I saw the horn, I felt it,” tighter still until in an instant he releases the man and throws himself back, his spine curved so he might seem a normal man’s height. Sweat rolls in giant drops down his forehead and neck, it beads ferociously on his cheeks, above his lip, over his arms. Reeking of the orange and spice smoke, he sweats it out into already saturated clothes. The madness is a fever and he is caught in it’s grasp. Worry and fear seem to creep over him as he considers that it might not have been Catch at all, perhaps Rhaena. “No,” aloud he speaks the rejection, “NO!” His arms will curl around, across his chest until he hugs himself, his eyes almost frantic as they look wildly about.

<Catch> There is a point within him. Within Catch, within Tennant, within all madmen and mind-swain. That point could be something gigantic, or something so small that it could go on, unnoticed, for years and years. There is the quiet recluse who, when he dies, is found to have thousands of dolls under his floorboards, mutilated and ravaged, the man seeing the evil that he might do upon a town's little girls. That is his point, when he knows he is mad. Catch's brains scattered against the floor, shaken free of horn that was little more than a prize. That was a point when he knew he had gone mad. Catch was frozen, bent against the table, and only slowly does he straighten. Tennant was at his point, and Catch was painfully unaware, tragically unaware, that this Point came from Rhaena herself. "C-c-come sit, Ser," Catch tried to coax him. The horn. Catch's whole body shook as he fumbled with a mug, drew water from the tepid bucket by the door. "C-c-come - come sit." He tries to be reasonable, but he is frightened, frightened of Tennant and frightened of his own, mad point, the one that hissed at him to smash Tennant's face into liquid. "What's wrong," Catch tries to ask, but there is a horror in his voice that he knows what it is.

<@Tennant> Sit, he didn’t want to sit. He wanted to lash out against the very fabric of reality, but still he came, even as he shook his head. Calming, if only slightly he would reach out and take the mug. That was what one did when offered something. It was automatic. But still he didn’t drink. Holding in carefully, tenderly as if it is a precious thing now. The weight of it, the texture. Surely this is real. And what is wrong. He had been asked but in the minutes that followed he only offered silence. Acclimated to the pain rolling through his body his eyes would find Catch’s, steady but confused. “It was a bad dream,” reverting to logic, despite his senses screaming otherwise and his mind reeling from the implications. The horn, Rhaena, Giuseppe, Genny. “Genny,” it was but a whisper and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I hope I haven’t hurt you, Catch.”

<Catch> Genny. Catch's ears splay, bestial, wrong things, elfin in a vague sense. They emerge from his tangle of curls, they are there, an offense on display. For a moment, the tin lantern heightens the suggestion of a muzzle, accents a long neck - as the sun slips below the horizon, there is Tennant, crouched at the table with a terrible, mind-blasted beast. Catch has his own tin cup, and it quivers in his hand. The feel of a knife on his thigh. The addled man knew why his mind lept to such conclusion, why he had, instinctively, apologized. It had happened, sometimes. Like absinthe eyes. Like the heavy tang of blood on a Fat Man's cleaver. What he says next is unfortunate, his words spilling from him like vomited blood. "Th-th-they'll kill her. Th-th-they won't want her, and th-they'll kill her, Ser Tennant. What will happen t-t-to you, when th-they f-f-find out."

<@Tennant> Everything in this place is wrong, the world itself is wrong, the water, the mug. It feels real but nothing can be trusted and the beast before him is evidence enough. Dropping with a thud and a splash, the water splatters on the floor. A remembered blade burns and his head lowers his eyes squinting against the impeding pain. Fingers twist and curl into pained, grasping claws, ready to tear at his own flesh before Catch speaks again. “No! No, no… no! Give it to me,” he stands abruptly.1 “Give it to me –we- can save her!”

<Catch> "I'll not have a wild dog to hound after my daughter," the Stahl had said, the man with heavy brows and an aquiline nose, the man who was every inch a Lord, his black curls shot through with grey. For he was an old man, among the Jernoah, Thirty-One, and that is why his fist was part of a ruling-council. His wisdom of years could not be argued with. "Yes, he is a fine prize. Such skin, such eyes! Have his dal'rak removed, and I shall sleep better." Catch drew back from Tennant's movements, sensing the pain, but not smelling the blood. Animal. Animal. He leaned away from Tennant, his eyes wide. "Wh-what do you mean," Catch asked, and his own groin throbbed, a faint echo of a long-ago history, when they had cut and cut and wondered why, why, it grew back, why it always grew back, and what else might grow back, were they to cut - what else they might cut away, so that their men and women may live longer. Godly flesh in the belly, jernoah-songs in the throat. "G-g-give you what," he asks, but he fears that he knows, his mismatched eyes darting to the bed, and back again.

<@Tennant> Mad he may be, but a fool; that was yet to be seen. A glance to the bed becomes a beacon and already standing it takes no time for him to dart to the bed and begin rummaging for the horn. Verbally no answer is given, though Catch surely has it now. Rationally, if his nightmares were caused by Rhaena it was because he had not complied in timely enough manner. He owed her the horn. He would do as he was asked because he had to, Genny would be saved, and Catch. Well he wasn’t sure what would happen to Catch, but he had survived well enough without it. The bed isn’t a terribly large or complex matter, any moment now and his fingers might brush the thing.

<Catch> That seeking hand gropes, and it seeks, and Catch is already there, leaping after Tennant, his legs tangled in a chair, turning it and himself over. "Stop it!" he shrieks, still ignorant, still unknowing. Because Tennant had always, always, tasted of Rhaena. And it made him perfect. Dagger-dances and Gloria-birthdays, watching her color and flirt, as if they would be sweet-hearts. Tennant's fingers would find something, at least. They would find the hard, wet edge of something, and would slip off, and then find it again. And he would be certain that it was curved. Were he to pull, from the gloomy depths of the bed he would see it. A skull, a dog's skull, grinning out at him from the depths. A dog's skull nailed to a bloody, foul mannequin, and in it's arms, the horn. Catch tried to drag Tennant away. But he did not hurt him. Because Tennant was Other Bells', but - most importantly - Tennant was Gloria's. "How - th-th-that won't f-f-fix her! It won't!"

<@Tennant> There are shrieks he does not obey. Long arms and fingers found the skull and mannequin, they pull it from under the bed. But his eyes see the skull face and instinctively his hand tears free, sending it skidding across the floor and into the room. It isn’t until a moment later that he recognizes the object attached and tries to lunge forward, but Catch holds his legs, pulls him back. Clawing and frantic he scrambles for it, wriggling and flailing that he might get away. And every movement is fire, every inch closer burns greater. “It will! It will. My lady will have it and spare her!” The reverent scream is almost rasping, the belief propelling his body forward, grasping and finding the object just out of reach. Wide, childlike eyes do not blink as he fights on for the thing, tears welling in the corners of his eyes from the pain in his leg, the burning through his muscles.

<Catch> My Lady will have it and spare her. There it is. There it is, and Catch, for a moment, lets Tennant go, a leg that slips through shocked, nerveless fingers, fingers whose master-brain has scattered, shrieking the revelation. My Lady will have it. His Mother, his precious Mother, is sent skittering away, and the horn lays there, a dull, angry pulse. Invisible tendrils stretch towards Tennant. They caress his cheek, his hair. Such a pity, it seemed to say, in His Lady's voice. Such a pity. You would have given me beautiful little play-things, strawberry blond twins. A lance of pain, and ending-pain through his groin. With an insane gibber of his own, Catch throws himself on top of Tennant. His strength is great, but it is an earthly strength, his dull eyes full of terror. My Lady. My Lady. They are going to take my horn again! He claws at Tennant's shirt, at his being, and they, they are two children fighting over candy, over a knife, and the horn glittered in the gore-spattered grasp of a laughing, wolf-headed revenant.

<@Tennant> Between the scramble to the horn and release, Tennant nearly flew across the room. Crawling back until he was all but hunching over to cradle the thing as if it was far more precious than Tennant in his right mind would consider it. Such a pity,’ the words echo, a dull, painful din rippling through his brain and throbbing with each wave. The following shot of pain cripples him, but he is atop the thing and clawing for it manically. There are cries and grunts and he will try to lift Catch off of him while clutching the thing to his chest.

<Catch> His hands, his hands are all over it, sticky and avaric and clutching, and Catch sees the bits of his brains and skull clinging to the root of it, carelessly flicked out all over the floor, the screams of My Lady My Lady echoing in his head. Catch balls his fingers into a fist, and with reckless desperation he lifts it, and slams it, and lifts it again, and again, and again against a skull-pan, against a brain, against a ruined brow. The horn itself was sharp; it dug thousands of tiny mouths into Tennant, as if it were a sword, and Catch's own fingers run freely with blood as he grips the blade of it.

<@Tennant> It wasn’t the pain that made him stop. Pain had filled him, he had become it. His fingers petrified in the harsh angles, knuckles gone white. It couldn’t be let go, but he stopped pulling, stopped fighting with his weight. Blood, Catch’s blood. The sight of it rolled his stomach. There is nothing left to come up but it makes him recoil and stop, watch, even though he can’t seem to let go. “Stop… stop.”

<Catch> "No," Catch cries in his horror. He'll not stop, couldn't stop. Tennant's mind, his blood, it all mingled into one, fevered being, and the horn's voice was sick-sweet, a demanding, a my Lady, my Lady and the feel of her black-stone hand combing through his hair, his marvelous, fiery hair. The horn was a power. It was a symbol. It meant that Tennant need never fear the future - yes, the future - that lay before him, Genny torn and bleeding under Giuseppe's laughing knives, and Tennant awakening in cold, hard bonds. 'And after you've healed,' the Rhaena-honey said, 'After you've healed, my little Tennant, you will have fine clothes and finer food, and you will be by my side, as I've always wanted. You are wasted as a theif. You are wasted as a spy. Why spin your cups and your glasses? You will be mine, and I will show you the pleasures of a telepath, and Glenn can say nothing. You will be my little precious Tennant, my little gelding.'  Catch tried to haul the horn away, tried to rip it free, but it was as if his own things would not listen, would betray him. The sword-horn touched all the places that Rhaena had touched, and sent that pleasure and that pain through Tennant's shattered brains, his flayed nerves. To bring the horn to Rhaena was paramount. To please Rhaena was all Tennant needed.

<@Tennant> That hand, her voice, it is intoxicating. All of it blended together and still he couldn’t let the thing free. The future was meant to be feared and it isn’t until the vision of his sister torn at Giuseppe’s hands, in the name of Rhaena’s perfect future. A future without a place for him and certainly not for Genny, already so perfect. Tears and sweat rolled down his cheeks.
[23:58] <@Tennant> 6Squinting eyes closed against the sight, fighting the pain as limbs thrashed, muscles galloped ahead until there was no more to give. He simply stopped. Pain would consume him but it stopped mattering, his hands released the thing and it was merely Catch that held him where he was. He wouldn’t even bother saying ‘stop’ again.

<Catch> 6Tennant spasmed in his grasp, and finally, finally, the horn could be ripped free, heedless of fingers or skin or flesh that may be torn in the process. It is his, his, and Catch clutches it to him, Tennant's blood a wet sick in his nose. There are no voices for Catch, no seduction, because this Thing is wholly of him, is him, a bit of madness stirred free by curious, impartial man-hands. Catch's celebration is short-lived. For a moment, as he looms over Tennant's body, the addled man is frightened that he may have killed him. He couldn't tell. His fists were full of blood, blood and fire, red hair sticky where Catch had gripped and pulled in his attempts to drag the horn away. Carefully, the addled man lay the horn out atop his bed. Then he sits. He sits, his great, mangled head cushioned in his hands, his mismatched eyes never leaving the sprawled, elegant form of Tennant as the man's blood soaked into his floor. Swain. Rhaena-swain, and he had come with smiles and good humor and he spun Miss Gloria around, and around, and around Catch's brains. Catch's spine hurt, and his hands stung fiercely, scraped knuckles and bitten flesh both. "Why," he asks the prone form, and it is a child's lost question.

<@Tennant> The small floor of the shack’s interior can barely contain him. A mess of a man, his shirt is torn and bloodied, his hair dark, thick with sweat oiled clumps. He lies still on the floor and watches the madman with weak and weary eyes, the very depths of them begging to be released from this madness. The sweat and tears that had been present have dripped and begin to dry. Deft hands that had taught Catch how to dry the dishes now laid mangled and splayed open as if he embraces some god above. His legs shift, painfully, stiff, straining, but it is clear he is no longer a threat. Disarmed for the time, disabled. The question may be rhetorical but the blood on his lips sticks, pulling long thin tendrils over his mouth as words are whispered. “Save Genny,” perhaps it was the answer, perhaps it was a request. For the time he simply looks up, trying to muster the strength to rise again.

<Catch> If Catch had a white-stick, he may have put it in his mouth. He may have lit it. Save Genny, and all of Catch's frightened thoughts coalesce onto that one, hoarse-spoke request. Save Genny. Catch regards Tennant, and he feels a great well of some feeling within him, a desire to throw his head back and howl, to keen a sorrow-song until the stars wept molten tears onto the world. Somehow, somehow, this broken man before him, for a moment, seemed a sadder figure than himself. "I'll save her," the addled man says. He promises. "I will." He lifts his head from his hands, sticky barting of drying, silver-pink blood. He tries to throw it back, like a man, but the draggles of his sweated and bloodied hair stick stubbornly to his brow, his cheeks. Like a beast, he looks, as he gazes at Tennant. "And I'll save you, t-t-too. Lie still. I'll - I'll t-t-take you where you'll b-b-be found."

<@Tennant> ‘Save Genny,’ it isn’t a request or even an answer, it is a mantra. It is the reason he even lives, the reason he’d been caught, the reason he so willingly served Glenn, the reason he was here at all. How could it end this way? Quite simply, it couldn't. Rising to one elbow, it slips at first, but he steadies it and props up one side, then another until he can manage to set his hands to the floor. Squashing the bloody pulp of his palms, the torn finger fragments into the floorboards, he sets his torso upright. Haggard and looking as though he might topple given a strong wind he listens to Catch’s promises. But they’re not enough to counteract the vision, the knowledge, the certain future foretold. For himself he doesn’t care, Rhaena had not gone so deep in his brain that every request must he fulfilled, not now, not after the searing pain had cauterized the wounds she’d left. But the vision of Genny, it was unacceptable. Without the strength to stand he pushes to his feet. Without the desire for survival he breaths and takes a step towards Catch. Without the will to continue and not wanting to live another moment in the madness he reaches for the horn again; even knowing full well the force that stands between his broken body and the goal.

<Catch> Not so deep. There was a deeper command at work within him, one that pulled and manipulated, a sheer, striking madness. And it had come from the desire, ordered desire, from the lips of Giuseppe that commanded 'Bring me this, your Lady wishes it'. His fingers had brushed it, and from that moment, it felt the desire, it rose to it. That was Catch. His mere existence was a desire; his mere existence brought chaos, the chaos of a great forest, the chaos of unbroken Life. And that is what sat before Tennant, crouched and ready. Catch could desire his horn, but it could not more rule him than a man's finger-nails. His want was a man's want for his fingers, for his fist. The thing before him was not a man, the flickering light elongating that face, a true muzzle with a beard that flickered and writhed. The ruined unicorn made no noise, though he opened his mouth; his fist, bloodied and spattered with red Tennant-hairs, fire-hairs, came crashing once more for that abused, silent skull.

<@Tennant> It was almost in his hand, perhaps he’d even grabbed it; the last thoughts of a battered, dizzy and delusional man. Connecting with no resistance, the hit would knock Tennant out cold before he even came near the horn. His body fell sharply beside Catch, crumpling in part on the bed. A fresh wound at his temple reached back into his scalp where is easily bled a deeper red over his hair. Burlap was surprisingly resilient, but still the blood seeps in. It is bright red, thick and hot; the smell of iron thick in the air as the ruddy man’s face pales and his eyes roll back and close. For the first time in hours his breathing is regular, body destroyed by over-real dreams and physical blows alike, he lies at the mercy of the madman.

<Catch> Mercy. What was mercy to Life itself, to wild and glorious and dangerous Life? Mercy was a weakness. Mercy was - was a man picking up the horn, the gemstones intertwined, a wonderful heat in his hands. It was putting the sword-horn aside. It was gently lifting the rest of Tennant, and setting him upon the bed. Tucking the quilts about his shoulders. Mercy was a madman, a too-bred madman, gently picked up the dog-headed mannequin, mourning the loss of a cheek-bone, a brief, gentle kiss on yellowed fangs. Tucking the 'body' back in her rightful place, under the bed. And once everything was hidden? Mercy was bundling the tall, fire-haired form of Tennant, and striding into the night.