sugar wraith | p

[BASTILLEPAW]

AND I'M JUST A DEAD MAN WALKING TONIGHT

His throat was burning with the echo of Beck's particular style of getting even, but he didn't care -- he'd gotten used to it, and besides, it was a small price to pay for getting what he needed for his people. Bast would let that little ghostly fucker string him up every damn day if it meant actually doing something half-right, and besides, he'd deserved it. Beck was correct in claiming they'd leveled the field, now -- Bast had gone for him and Beck had come right back, and now they were even. Allies. It was almost funny, thinking about it.

Except that he couldn't feel anything, the apathy finally having settled in, and he was... at odds with it, almost. Not certain that he wanted it. He showed up at Rad's door without notice, without knocking, knowing damned well she'd want to hear about his latest perils, anyway. He pushed the door open with a yawn, his throat tight and rough with the motion, and drawled, "I hope whatever shit you have to try this time is more of an upper, because this week is shit."

[ [member=344]radeken[/member] ]

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[radeken]

"[color=black]I'll bet." The worn red cabinet was all opened up in anticipation of Bastille's arrival. Something that looked like a cutting board - stained all colors from long nights past spent preparing and analyzing and, sometimes, slouching over, asleep and drooling - sat in front of it. Radeken herself was across the room with mounds of blankets and pillows between her and her little guinea pig at an area that looked as though it had been hastily cleared to make room for a pot of water boiling over a carefully contained flame. A cauldron for my potions and brews. She snorted at the thought, gingerly ladeling out a mugful of clear steaming water. "[color=black]Well, I was half wondering if you'd let me try and stop your heart again. Just to see how many times you can take it." He seemed gung-ho about so many other things she had done in the name of 'research', and Radeken was nothing if not always eager to exploit the self-destructive nature of others. "[color=black]But I think I have something for you." The halo grumbled, leaving the steamy mug on the cutting board. "[color=black]Come on in, sit down. You're not going to want to for long."

In the time it took for her to bookmark one page in her leather-bound research book and turn to another page which already had a small amount of writing on it. Kratom. Increased activity in mice (weird taste after). Reverse symptoms w/ higher dose? She re-read the page over before something changed her mind and she turned to another blank page. Radeken was quiet after that, pulling another bowl free. By the time she turned to Bastille, half of the mug had been poured into the bowl and she had added dried blossoms into the murky green liquid that opened lazily as they bobbed along. "[color=black]This should help. Or if I got the dosage wrong, sweet dreams." She shrugged, keeping the mug close to her as if to prohibit him from drinking just yet. "[color=black]Now, uh," Radeken licked her lips, "[color=black]You know, right? That I want to know?" She was cleaning up impatiently now, determined to get him talking while also loathe to leave her station a mess. "[color=black]What did you see? Did you see anything? Do you remember it? I w- I need to know everything you can remember. Give me what I want and you'll get your treat." She didn't want to have to alternate between asking him what does dying feel like? and how does that drug feel? so she decided to needle him for what she was most curious about first.

[BASTILLEPAW]

AND I'M JUST A DEAD MAN WALKING TONIGHT

Bastille wasn't at all surprised to see that she'd already started prepping -- he supposed he was pretty predictable, and tended to show up at her door like clockwork these days. Dependency was a bitch, wasn't it? He settled back as she worked, eyeing the cauldron of hell as he liked to think of it as, and found himself smirking in dull amusement at her inquiry. Of course she did. "I don't really care what you do to me as long as you keep the uppers in circulation," he drawled, idle, because he frankly didn't care if she wanted to fuck around with trying to kill him. It didn't seem like Grimm was willing to release him, even if Bastille wanted to be released, so what was the point in throwing a fit over her experiments? He probably wouldn't have cared even if he could feel.

Of course Rad knew the truth, if only because she was the one plugging him full of drugs. Of course he hadn't fucking overdosed again; even he could admit that the excuse was a weak one, with the state he arrived in, but it was all he had. He could only be relieved Rad hadn't suddenly decided to care and expose him. He had little to no issue with her knowing what really happened, if only because he knew the information was unlikely to go any where.

He rolled his eyes as she held the drink hostage, and paused as he forced himself to think back. Everything was hazy in those 90 seconds, the faintest of impressions leaking through the cracks, but Bast hadn't been able to hold onto it for long. "I remember right before -- Beck strung me up so that I'd suffocate, not break my neck. He wanted it to be slow. Like drowning," he said, even, lacking any heat about the situation as he considered what he could recall, "Burned. Mostly just my throat and lungs, but then everything else burned before it went numb. I... think I passed out before my heart stopped. There was... something. Like I wasn't really dead yet. Mist. I think my souls were there."

He'd explained his souls, briefly, to Rad before -- a way of explanation for some of the odd reactions he had to her experiments, for how it might affect him differently when there were other factors at play. It's not like his past lives were a secret, anyway, so he'd never seen a problem with it. "I don't know. Vanilla. It all smelled like vanilla, but I haven't been able to remember much of what they said or what happened in the darkness. And then I was awake, and it all burned again."

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[radeken]

“[color=black]I know.” And oh, did she. The world wasn’t kind to people who stopped caring about themselves and neither was Radeken. So if she squinted, this was all a part of some cosmic duty of hers, maybe. Not packaged and delivered by some higher power, though. I am the highest power, she thought darkly. Rad knew he didn’t care what happened to him, she knew he was going to stay on this same path unless someone knocked him off of it (and since it was in her best interest that he not do that, she was already prepared to combat that sort of interference), and she knew he was a liar, liar, liar. Lying about being alright, lying about his death. Fortunately for him it wasn’t in her nature to expose him just as it wasn’t in her nature to shoot herself in the foot. Everything was working out just fine for her and she didn’t give a rat’s ass how it was for him (how it was to him really, not how it was for the apathy, the addiction).

“[color=black]The little sadist.” She noted flatly about Beck as he recounted the incident. “[color=black]And you did. Everyone loses consciousness before dying when they’re suffocating. Unless something else happens to them first, I guess.” Choking someone out took a long time and to people who weren’t weird, that was frustrating enough to resort to some other quicker way of killing halfway through. Frustration streamlines everything.

She pursed her lips when he mentioned his souls. Radeken didn’t like that. The whole concept fascinated her, but what drove needles into her sides was that she wasn’t sure how to analyze it. You can’t measure a soul, can you? You can’t dissect it, touch it, smell it. She hadn’t even thought souls were real, but everyone else seemed to buy it. She still took it with a grain of salt every time he brought them up. “[color=black]I’m sorry,” There was a pause. “[color=black]About the vanilla.” She explained quickly. “[color=black]Terrible smell.” Sickly and cloying and too, too heavy. “[color=black]Drink up.” She relinquished the tea and stepped back to record what had been shared.

[BASTILLEPAW]

AND I'M JUST A DEAD MAN WALKING TONIGHT

Bastille leveled her with an even look, but didn't bother to question her immediate response. Of course she knew that he had very few limits when it came to her damned experiments -- she knew damned well that he was addicted, and he might have cared that she was enabling him if not for the fact that it was his own fault. What was the point in blaming Rad? If she'd turned him down, he would have gone to someone else, and they probably wouldn't bother keeping him alive through it all. He was content in knowing that she was using him because he was using her, too. Life was like that sometimes.

Bast offered a lazy shrug in response to her commentary on Beck, drawling idly, "After Luna, I tracked him down and forced him to relive his worst fear -- his death -- a few times. I'd call him vengeful, really." A humorless grin. "At least we're even now, though, yeah?" He saw no issue with telling Rad the truth, because again, who would she care to tell? He had never told anyone about what he'd done, and in a way it felt a little liberating, giving up the secret. He tended to give his worsts to Rad. He made a humming noise in response to her confirmation that he passed out, and shrugged.

He rolled his eyes at her "apology", and snorted. "I like vanilla," he provided, unperturbed by her lack of empathy. He didn't expect any, and besides -- it's not like he had much to offer himself. He eyed her concoction and obediently took a sip, adding in between two more, "If this one kills me again, I'll try to remember more of it this time." A hint of a smirk.

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