consumed by either fire or fire

[tryingitall]

Who: Balthazar, everyone and anyone! (Balthazar's vessel may also make appearances!)
Where: Memories, mindscapes, and dreams.
When: Days 83-88
What: An orgy, the Titanic, Heavenly angst, and Art. The city is also an option, I just didn't write a blurb for it.
Warnings: Sex, angst, potential violence, possible deaths depending on scenario.


The room is a mess. Blankets and cushions are strewn about the floor, a lamp has been knocked over, and someone has spilled liquor across of the piled clothing in the corner. The scent is overwhelming in the humid heat: sex, incense, sweat, alcohol.
It’s hard to tell how many bodies are entwined together here. A dozen? More? There are four on the bed, one person clinging so hard to the headboard that it creaks with every movement. Three more are clustered around a chair, the occupant’s whines and moans muffled by the close press of nude bodies. In a corner, a young woman is giggling as another girl licks drops of wine out of her cleavage.
Somewhere amidst the knots of slick bodies, there is an angel. He may be hard to track at first, but his voice winds its way through the gathering, burning through the noises of panting and the smack of skin against skin, a litany of soft endearments and reverent curses. There, good, yes, don’t stop, don’t stop…



The sky is black overhead, dotted with frosty stars, and the water rolling beneath the hull of the ship is the color of gray pearls. Titanic is far from shore, and her passengers are cheerfully oblivious to the danger drawing near. Balthazar rode this ship once before, as a faux-first-mate. This time, he’s a stowaway, a dark figure leaning against the railing near the bow. Only an observer to a history irrevocably written down.
“Pretty night,” a man pauses to greet him, on a stroll around the deck. “Cold as hell, but pretty.”
“It is, isn’t it?” The angel agrees, looking up at the sky. “I daresay it’ll get colder before the morning comes, though. We’ll see if you still think it’s pretty then, shall we?”
The stranger laughs. “Or I could just go inside.”
“No. Enjoy the beauty while it lasts.” Balthazar gives a small, deadened smile. There’s ice close ahead. The tragedy will begin and end in only a few short hours.



Balthazar’s not sure why his mind works so selectively. He can remember vivid flashes from his first days in existence. Comets sailing past the earth, the bubble of the primordial sea, and laughter, from an archangel, that seemed too big and bright for the skies that echoed its refrain.
After Lucifer’s Fall, the memories get dim and tangled. Heaven went darker, quieter, but how quickly did it happen? How soon after the clash did Gabriel go, too? He can’t be sure, and it’s unsettling for a being that isn’t supposed to suffer from age.
Still, the young angel has his own recollection of the moments after Gabriel was gone, when it felt like Heaven itself had a gaping wound.
He’s in a garden drenched with dew, like a morning in late spring. There are no flowers, only bare lily stamens left after petals fall away. It’s quiet, and gray, and Balthazar can feel his Grace aching, trembling on the edge of collapse. Can’t you bring him back, Father? Can’t you bring them both back?
There’s no answer, but he’s not sure he expected one. God doesn’t talk to the youngest angels. Perhaps they’re too frail to hear the Divine Voice directly. Thy will be done, he adds as an afterthought, but he doesn’t mean it, and he knows it.
Still, if God isn’t hearing his prayer anyway, there’s no harm in lying. A thousand angelic eyes blink rapidly, as if to clear themselves of tears they weren’t even designed to shed.



Dead. Castiel: dead. Uriel: dead, along with the siblings he murdered. Anna: locked away, untouchable, maybe soon to die, too.
Cas. Dead.
The walls of the Heavenly armory are thick, and Balthazar is the only one inside it now. The snap and ripple of energy from a thousand enchanted weapons dances over the walls, casting shadows of his own wings that seem to shiver in constant motion. His Grace is clenched into a dense, dark knot in the center of his being, a core of emotion drawing tighter, tighter, until everything outside it feels numb. Floating.
One by one, he closes all of his eyes, and time twists away from him. He’s not sure how long he blacks out, but when he’s sensible again, the wards are smashed, the weapons strewn all over, and both vessel and trueform ache, blue with bruises.
Balthazar looks blankly at the mess for a long moment, then moves to pick things up, piece by piece. It’s not until his arms are full that he realizes he has no intention of putting them back in their proper places.



Everything is light and fire and eyes. The human within the angel feels the pressure of power and age, burned to cinders and crushed into diamonds by the being within him (or is he within the angel now?). He’s died a hundred thousand rapturous deaths, cried in pain until his voice is transmuted into something ethereal and sharp as an ofan’s wing. But he’s still there, here, everywhere the angel is, and he remembers, and dreams.
Ink slices across a page. A fine gray haze of graphite dust hangs in the air. Paint drips and rolls down the shaft of a brush, stains his hands and sleeves, rich and sensual. If he could erase his mistakes and paint himself over, he would use shades of blue and gold; he would rip himself off the canvas and re-stretch to his limits and beyond.
He curls and uncurls his fingers, and suddenly his hands are wings, fine-boned and light, brittle and soft at the edges and heavy all the way down his arms.
“I promise, you’ll have Heaven,” the angel told him. “Someday.”
“Fuck it,” he answered. “I don’t need Heaven.”
Levi has what he needs: a half-wild brainfever, an infinite blend of Paradise and Perdition where the Muse is the only God that matters. Being a vessel hasn’t taken that away. Nothing ever will.

Comments

2!

[blackmagus]

It's strange, seeing the ocean from this perspective — from something sitting on it, through windows that look brand new. Everything gleams and shines. She's been on a boat this size only once before, a freighter, and for nothing as pleasant as what these people seem to be experiencing. Before the War there had been pleasure cruises, but only a few. Passengers preferred airships, trading speed for a little less safety.

Fortescue avoids the crew and passengers where she can, the late dinner crowd, as she's not really dressed for the occasion in her usual garb. Though most of the fashions here still exist in her world, none of the other women are wearing pants. It throws her for a loop, but then, so does what she finds as she makes her way out onto the deck. Printed on a life ring, of course, is RMS TITANIC. She stops to stare.

"Huh."

Jazz sniffs the air nearby, short fur not doing much to protect his feet from the cold deck. He pads a short distance nearby until he catches a familiar scent, and mewls loudly in its direction.

[tryingitall]

Balthazar hears the cat and straightens. That can't be right. No one brought pets on this ship, did they? Unless there are ship's cats to keep the rat population down. Caught between dream and memory, he stands still, confused, but something in him recognizes Jazz when he sees him, and by extension Fortescue.

It still doesn't make much sense to him, though, beyond a sense of both keen familiarity and intuitive knowledge that the lady and her cat don't belong in these surroundings.

"...what's happening?" He crouches to stroke the cat, then blinks at Fortescue. It's not a greeting, but rather a genuine statement of bewilderment.

[blackmagus]

"...I... don't know," she says, at first, just as disconcerted now that she knows vaguely where she is. Very vaguely. "I thought it'd... higher."

Jazz gives an appreciative mewl at the attention, looking up at him with a lot more clarity and focus than most animals in dreams have. Most animals don't dream with humans, after all. His breath comes out in little foggy puffs.

"Is this really the Titanic?"

[tryingitall]

"You thought the ship would be higher?" He gives Fortescue a faint smirk. It's a slightly odd assumption to make, in his opinion.

"This is the Titanic, yes. Her maiden voyage. I hope you didn't overpay for tickets." Because the ship's going down, and he's not allowed to save anyone. Probably not even the cat.

Sighing, he offers to scratch under Jazz' chin.

[blackmagus]

Everything feels scattered, somehow. A mix. Like she's slipped through the Angel Gate into a world where everything is smashed together. She takes the couple of steps over to the rail to look down at the dark ocean, frowning.

"Yes, well, when I learned about her maiden flight, it was the RMA Titanic... and her experimental engines caught on fire..."

Fortescue looks back. It's still a new experience. She's so used to being high in the sky when traveling. Jazz absorbs one or two scratches before, aloofly, he strolls over to chew on one of the nearby piles of rope.

3

[hung_garian]

Gabriel shouldn't be here, of course, both from a chronological point of view and just from his own perspective too. He'd left Heaven for a reason - a good one, as he saw it, but he hadn't considered the effects it would have. He'd been much more concerned with escaping the pain of staying than considering that his departure might affect anyone else. Perhaps it had been naive of him, but it wasn't that he hadn't cared about those he was leaving behind, just that he hadn't thought about it. He'd expected Michael and Raphael to miss him, vaguely, and on the few fleeting occasions when he had given it any thought, he hadn't imagined the younger angels being affected, or necessarily even noticing.

Now, though, he can see that that isn't quite the case. Besides the logic (or maybe the lack thereof) of the dream, being in Heaven, a less physical and less restricted plane of existence, in their true forms instead of the human vessels, gives them a particular closeness and openness. He's aware of Balthazar's pain as acutely as if it were a sound or scent, and while he can't exactly know his thoughts, he can tell what's causing it. That's the dream's influence, most likely - he shouldn't know, otherwise, and it's certainly not something he'd have guessed. Knowing this is at least in part because of him tugs at his Grace in an uncomfortable way. It's oddly gratifying, in a twisted way, knowing that Balthazar had cared when he left, but at the same time he hates that his actions have hurt his brother. That hadn't been what he'd wanted. He should have thought.

There's no changing the past, though, and he's certain, deep down and never entirely admitted, that even had he known the problems his leaving would cause, that he'd have gone anyway. He doesn't remember how or why he's back in Heaven now, but his mind glosses over that detail: he knows that he wouldn't willingly return. Since he can't change it though, there's not a lot he can do, really, except to step up silently behind Balthazar and wrap a wing around him in what might even (if one were to squint) resemble a hug.

[tryingitall]

In the dreamscape, Balthazar seems to waver and ripple between the shape of his vessel and angelic trueform. Sometimes he's one or the other, sometimes both at once. Either way, he feels small next to Gabriel, looking up startled at the touch of the archangel's wing. Something resembling shyness crosses his face, and he looks down quickly.

"It's not really my place, is it? To complain. But we all feel the loss. Felt the loss." Is this past or present or something utterly unreal? Balthazar's not sure, himself.

"Maybe some of us should have left to look for you."

[hung_garian]

Although given the topic it might make more sense for Gabriel to appear as his vessel, he instead takes his true form, though scaled down enough for any size difference not to be hugely disproportionate. He doesn't seem to see anything strange about Balthazar's appearance shifting. That's not really surprising, though - out of everything that's happened in these strange dream-sharing situations, it's probably one of the less odd things.

"They wouldn't have found me." If they had, he'd have had to get rid of them. He hates the idea of hurting his siblings, let alone killing them, but if they'd kept coming after him he thinks he might have had to resort to violence in the end. "And I wouldn't have come back. Not willingly."

[tryingitall]

That hurts. It hurts a lot. There's an audible snap as Balthazar dwindles into his vessel once more, this time holding onto the shape, hiding within it like he hopes to use it as a mask. "Of course," his voice, stripped of the angelic resonance, is almost a monotone. "No point in running away from the Host and then letting us follow you, I suppose."

Rising, he moves away from the touch of Gabriel's wing in a way that's meant to be tactful, but his vessel's posture screams anger and insecurity. "I wish there had been something to stay for. For you, for Anna, for Cassi..."

There's a moment's pause, and he adds almost inaudibly, "I wish I were worth staying for. By the time I thought to follow, there was no one left to catch up to."

2

[bluesrat]

It's cold, cold as winter in Michigan, but Rat hasn't had time to prepare since he's been thrust into it unexpectedly. He cannot, in fact, remember how he got here. He's partly afraid he must be a stowaway, because there's something very glamorous about the rooms he sees through the windows on deck and it looks like the kind of place he's never belonged to.
Plagued by worry, he wraps his ragged coat tighter and ambles along the dark outer deck, until he nearly walks into somebody else along the railing. "Sorry!"

[tryingitall]

"Oof!" Balthazar wasn't watching when he turned to go indoors. Poor Rat; the minor collision won't hurt the angel, but it's a bit like slamming into a concrete wall. "I'm sorry, are you all right?"

His brow creases as he catches a glimpse of the other man's face. "Do I know you?"

[bluesrat]

He's just slightly dazed, but the voice and face make him pause, too. "You should. Where are we? How did we get here? It's freezing..."

[tryingitall]

Okay. Either this person is very drunk, or Balthazar's missing something important. "Then I've forgotten your name...? Let's get inside, it's going to get a lot colder soon."

What with the iceberg and the ship going down and all.

Heat

[undomesticated]

The smell was what hit her first. It wasn't the first time she'd smelled sex; she did have two older brothers and parents who were still very much attracted to each other. It was the first time she'd actively been in the presence of so much of it. While staying with the tribes in Namibia and a few in the Amazon, sex hadn't been something hidden from children. It was done with perhaps a little privacy attempted, but for the most part, everyone knew what was happening.

Especially the shifters. The scents, the smells, they were things that you couldn't out and out ignore, but one tried to politely not mention it, just as most people didn't pay too much attention when someone went around nude. It was what it was.

This, however, was... pure debauchery. All she could smell was sex and alcohol, all she could hear were some very obscene sounds mixed in with cries and pleadings for more.

Until she heard something familiar. A voice. One person's face swam into her thoughts when she heard it and she found herself blushing, back turned to the writhing pile on the floor as she realized who was in the center of it. Jesus.

Hurriedly, she moved to a door to open it, to leave and let him have his dream to himself since she recognized (thanks to Ned) what was happening. The door wouldn't open. It didn't even move like a locked door would, feeling more like it was molded into the scenery. Shit. She kicked at it, pulled at it, cursed a blue streak at it, but it wouldn't open.

She was trapped in Balthazar's sex dream and she felt so horribly embarrassed. She actually yipped and jumped when one of the bodies nearby reached out a hand to slide up her thigh, acting like she'd been scalded. "No touchy, buddy."

[tryingitall]

The sound of thumping at the door is what interrupts the angel's bittersweet sex fantasy. He's slow to come out of it, but the shapes of some of the participants begin to blur and dissolve like fleshtone mist. Perhaps he recognizes her voice, or perhaps it's just the tone of alarm it conveys, but after she complains, he sits up, disentangling from the group around him. He's very flushed and his hair is all over the place, and when he looks at her, still caught amidst dream-logic, his expression is a bit like that of a sleepwalker being woken.

"...did you want to go? I didn't intend for anyone to feel pressured or uncomfortable."

He's not quite sure who she is yet, except that she's in the orgy-room and familiar, so obviously she's a guest he invited there!

[undomesticated]

She looks over at him, keeping her gaze pointedly at chest height or higher. Not that she had a problem with nudity or even him naked, but he wasn't just naked. He was naked and... happy.

Cheeks flushed, her chin lifted as she tried not to show that she was embarrassed. She was an adult. Almost. She was a shifter. Nakedness and sex shouldn't bother her. It didn't in that taboo sense of 'oh my god, not sex!', but it was that she had no actively practical knowledge of it herself.

"I, um, I... That would probably be best, Balthazar." He looked mussed up, sleepy, sated, aroused, and if it wasn't for the part of him she was pointedly not looking at, he'd look somewhat adorable.

[tryingitall]

"Of course, love." He can't remember her name, and at the moment it feels like something he really should know. Why that would be, he's not sure. He doesn't know the names of half the people here, and by morning it won't matter. But she's so young! Maybe he should be more careful about who he coaxes into these things. It wouldn't be very nice to traumatize some poor teenager.

He gets up and pulls a sheet off the bed, eyeing it critically for cleanliness, then wraps up in it, stumbling over to open the door for her. "Let me call you a cab, then? Don't want you driving home if you've been drinking the champagne."

He's clumsy and shaky with adrenaline, and there are a few marks along his neck that suggest someone's been biting, but for as involved as he was in the activity a moment ago, he doesn't seem mad to have been interrupted. The door opens for him, leading into a long, tidy hallway hung with bright watercolors in simple frames. At the end of it, there's a flicker of multicolored track lighting that makes the room beyond look like a discotheque, but there does seem to be a phone on a table by a disheveled sofa.

1

[happytobleed]

Castiel's not sure how he found himself in this house. The last thing he'd known, he'd been walking down a short hallway to a fast food bathroom. He'd opened the door and as soon as it closed behind him, he was in this room with these bodies, filthy trench coat leaving him very over-dressed for the occasion.

He knows enough now to know what he's seeing, though not the whys or the hows of it all.

Eyes scan over the naked bodies as they move and they are without the shame a human might have, even if the sight does make him nervous.

It's then that Balthazar's voice draws his attention and Castiel's eyes come to focus on him.

"Balthazar?"

[tryingitall]

At the moment Castiel arrives, mercifully, Balthazar has stumbled out of his group to grab another glass of champagne. Not so fortunately, perhaps, he's nude and thoroughly mussed, even slightly bruised, and visibly shaky with adrenaline. Leaning against the edge of the bed, he gives Cas a deer-in-the-headlights look.

He's often fantasized about having this particular sibling join him in one of these things, but...not quite like this. Trying to decide how mortified he is, he gulps the entirety of his glass of champagne while staring at Cas through the glass.

His mind is trying to make sense of it, and the first idea that pops into his head is that Castiel must have needed him for something related to the fight against Raphael. Of course. Leave it to Cas to just walk in on something like this without knocking. He clears his throat and smiles weakly. "Hello, can I get you a drink?"

[happytobleed]

Looking around, Castiel is still unsure of so much. Is that what this is? They're to have a drink now as the humans around them... pleasure each other? Strange.

"How did we find ourselves here?" The bathroom he'd been walking towards a moment ago is forgotten in favor of the feeling that he'd needed Balthazar for something, not that he can remember what it was for the life of him.

A woman to his right moans loudly and Castiel's eyes widen as he turns to stare, a mixture of fear and curiosity creeping onto his face.

[tryingitall]

"What?" Is Castiel that disoriented? "I've been here, Cas. This is my apartment. I'm assuming you wanted me for something."

Oh. That was poorly thought-out phrasing. If he weren't already flushed, he might be blushing. "For...business, I mean." He glances at the pile of bodies he's just left. No one seems to be paying the conversation any mind right now. Gingerly, he steps over a tangle of legs, coming closer to Cas. It seems pointless to worry about the fact that his vessel is naked just now. "Are you all right?"

Rage

[servingmichael]

Raphael watches but doesn't interfere. It wouldn't do any good at this point, and really he understands it. There was a reason, a very good reason, why Raphael worked so hard to repress his own emotions. So he waits, leading a stillness to the dream that he is certain wasn't actually there.

[tryingitall]

Balthazar's oblivious to the secondary presence watching him, caught up in the moment. A whirl of activity, he gathers as many of the weapons as he can carry, leaving the Horn of Jericho lying in the center of the floor.

The dream takes on a less literal quality, then, a wash of imagery: an explosion in slow motion. A streak of light, the whine of car alarms, the tinkle of broken glass--or is it ice cubes being stirred around a cup?

Then there's a boy, dark-skinned and thin, with angry brown eyes. Balthazar's sitting on the steps of an apartment building beside him. "I'd bring your brother back if I could," the angel is saying, softly, sincerely. "I can't. But I can help you get justice."

The boy says nothing for a long, drawn-out moment, while cicadas sing in the trees behind the building.

[servingmichael]

There's a moment. Time. Where Raphael doesn't react. For several reasons, not the least of which is wondering what in Heaven's name Balthazar is doing.

He can understand the rage, reaching out to smash and destroy. He can (almost) understand taking weapons - they are in a war. Though he doesn't envy Balthazar when Virgil gets his hands on him.

But what is he doing, here, with this boy?

He finally steps in, speaks up. "How do you plan to do that, brother?"

[tryingitall]

Balthazar feels a bit sad about burning that bridge, truth be told. He and Virgil weren't best friends, but they got along well enough. Balthazar admired him.

It took a hell of a lot to alienate him from the society of the Host.

When Raphael speaks, everything freezes except the younger angel. He looks up with an expression of mixed fear and fury. Half in and half out of the dream, he rises and flares his wings. It's a bit like an angry sparrow facing down an eagle. "Raphael. You found me quicker than I expected."