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+----- Thread: THE DARKEST HEARTS OF MEN // DES (/showthread.php?tid=6156)
THE DARKEST HEARTS OF MEN // DES - GABRIEL - 09-13-2018
[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-size: 9.4pt; line-height: 1.4;"]He didn't know what had gotten into Moon. The kid always had a sharp tongue, sure, liked to give better than what he got, but there was an edge to him that hadn't been there before. It...well, Gabe shouldn't be surprised, considering he'd been tortured, and he'd seen someone he might have considered a frenemy stand on the sidelines as it happened. Regardless, Des wasn't involved in that. He wished he had the time to say that Des had been a saint compared to the rest of the people in The Typhoon, but would Moon have even believed him? Gabe was more than willing to vouch for Des, even with whatever lurked beneath the surface threatening to protrude. Was there no room for redemption anymore? For doing better? Or had all thoughts of that died with Suiteheart and Margaery? No fucking wonder The Ascendants was all out of sorts. Nothing was as it had been, and he wanted- he had wanted Des to find something here, despite his inadvertent arrival. The Ascendants could be good for him, but he wouldn't blame him for not thinking the same.
He'd gotten off on the wrong foot with one too many people for the experience to be more than bitter. Maybe he needed to have a talk with Moon about whatever was hounding him, but for now, the more physically injured kid took priority, as he had back when he crash-landed. If only everyone'd gotten the same memo about that.
Grimacing, he rubbed hard at his head, the constant throbbing beginning to really piss him off. Okay, so the list: visit Des, make sure Des isn't worse than he was before, check in with Laz, check in with Moon, try not to tear own head off. First things first, then, and he trudged off to the area for Des' recovery, occasionally passing through solid objects and unable to find it within himself to give a shit about it. Just one more thing falling apart. Nothing new in the grand scheme of life.
Poking his head into this section of the Observatory, he drew in and released several careful breaths before approaching their crashed UFO. Truth be told, shit probably would've gone better for Des if he were an alien, because evidently, all anyone gave a shit about was allegiance, so even if the aliens were hell-bent on destroying the earth, at least they weren't from The Typhoon, right? Gabe wasn't even making sense anymore. Fucking migraine, or whatever it was.
"You holding up okay in here? I brought a li'l pick-me-up." He turned his neck around, grabbing the bottle he'd kept between his wings and setting it down to roll over. "Probably not as good as your stash, but I don't think anyone's got a collection like that."
[align=right][i]——INFO
Re: THE DARKEST HEARTS OF MEN // DES - adomania - 09-13-2018
[align=center][div style="borderwidth=0px; width: 55%; line-height:115%; text-align: justify;font-family: calibri;"][ im so sorry at how long this is wodiawjodwi I didn't expect it to drag out but here I am with feelings about sad des ]
It was no lie that, for a majority of his life, Des had wondered about how his future would turn out. When he was young and each meager meal could be his last, he hadn't expected anything more than ending up dead in some ditch, with not a drop of honor to his name yet the many names of those he had killed hanging over his head and dragging him down to hell. He didn't believe in hell, really. He didn't believe it was worse than what he had already gotten, at least.
In hell, people like him who deserved it got to rot for the rest of eternity, or so the story went. Here, where everyone was one step away from death at any given moment... even the innocent weren't spared.
Somewhere along the line shit had changed, though. It was hard for him to recall what exactly prompted it (maybe they had pushed him too far? The hand who both beat and fed him had finally shoved him over the edge?) but the second half of his life was spent trying to find a way to redeem himself for the mistakes he had done when he had nothing to live for. The anger inside of him had festered, built up in pent up energy... then it all just disappeared, replaced by a tiring, gut-wrenching ache. Those who had fucked him up were either dead or gone, and there was nothing seemingly left for him but to go on, because as much as the noose appealed to him he was stubborn and too afraid to actively die.
Then it turned out he couldn't even properly die.
But he had tried. He had fantasies of joining the 'good' side, of helping others in whatever way he could in order to simply become the man everyone told him he could never be. And it wasn't just out of spite, although that fueled him just as much. He genuinely hoped that he could do something, because he knew as much as the next man that those he had killed were likely never coming back.
Those fantasies usually went better than reality. He should know. This was a prime example. It was no lie that the ascendants had been on his radar for a while now, even before Gabriel had arrived on the railroad to the Typhoon covered in their scent, but he had actively avoided it because he didn't feel like he deserved it. He was still so far from becoming the man he wanted to be, hoping to fix himself up all pretty before coming to their border begging for some sort of chance... then it just so happened to be that he went and fucked that up as well, and whereas at first he had hoped that people like them, the good guys, would understand where he was coming from and offer him that second chance... all they did was crush him back down to where he had been years ago. A small kid without anything to look forward to but his next meal.
If the good guys thought he was better off dead and gone without even knowing of his past, throwing around big words like they knew exactly what was going on, then what hope was there left for him to even try? He was too tired to even revert back to some cold, empty shell of himself, abandoning that path for long enough to actively shirk away from it. He was left with nothing but exhaustion, already planning how to run away yet again to try and find somewhere to stay. Maybe the Snowbound would fit his fancy.
But then he would run away, and the entire point would inevitably be lost once more. The childish hope he had once held was very quickly fading, and it was hard to grasp and tendrils that were barely even there anymore, slipping more and more from between his fingers with each passing day.
They still let him stay here, though, even if it was for the time being. Des had a strange feeling he had Gabriel to thank for that (it was still something close to a miracle that the man was here to begin with, the only thing keeping the aforementioned hope up at the moment.) But the visits to his allocated room were scarce, and (thankfully) nonexistent from Moon's side, so he was left to his own devices, occasionally having his bandages changed with glances cast towards him ranging from innocently curious to scathing. Word got around in cliques, no doubt, and Moon probably talked to one or another person about the event. For that Desperado couldn't have even blamed him. If he had any company, he would be doing the same.
But it turned out he stuck out like a sore thumb, too injured to turn back into a lion and with no friends there to comfort his sorry ass, itching for a smoke but conveniently having none available as all his cigarettes had burned in the crash landing. He had fire powers, earth powers, hear shit from miles away... but it just so happened to be that he did not possess the ability to make things out of thin air, and his anxiety only built in the loneliness without even the smoke to chase the demons away. They had caught up with him far faster than he wanted them to.
He was just about ready to just try and go to sleep, if only to make the time go by faster, only to hear the approaching footsteps that he had by now memorized to be Gabriel's. The tension he hadn't realized was building in his muscles faded away, although not completely, and he tried to make himself look at least a little bit more presentable despite the fact he could do very little about the fact that he was covered in bloody bandages. At least he had been cleaned from all the dirt that got caught in his scales when he fell. He could have been left to get an infection (something he wouldn't be surprised about if it happened.)
Gabriel's presence, though, was a lot more calming than any of the medics he had met thus far. The Imperia he had been told about seemed to be missing as of that moment, and he hoped that at least she would have some common sense. But until then all he had left was the hybrid in this foreign, bitter clan... and really he couldn't have asked for better company. He felt that even Gabriel was too good for him to be talking to.
He didn't respond to Gabriel's question with anything more than a grunt, still sore with the subject and not wanting to pick at wounds that weren't even near closing just yet. Maybe once he was drunk enough, as the bottle was presented to him and he quirked a metaphorical brow at it, then at the man in question who had brought it. "I'm starting to think that our methods of getting better are questionable, if what the 'healthcare' here has told me is true," they had denied him both alcohol and smoking no matter how much he asked, until eventually he gave up asking.
A soft silence fell between them, far less charged than the one that had spanned while he was still in a self-made crater, and eventually he leaned forward to grab at the bottle with a dark chuckle. "My stash is probably already looted and gone, if I know the pirate type well enough. Guess there's little point in going back there anymore," not that he was considering it. He had a long, firm history of staying away from places he had retreated from. The thought had only crossed his mind briefly upon coming face to face with nothing but aggression from assholes he had once hoped would be kind to someone like him.