kore_logs | consumed by either fire or fire

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consumed by either fire or fire

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.

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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.

"...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?"

"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.

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.

"...maiden flight?" Sensing that the cat is done with cuddles for the moment, Balthazar stands and goes to join Fortescue at the railing. "As far as I'm aware, she was always a seagoing vessel. Are you certain you're not thinking of the Hindenburg?"

An equally doomed transport, but at least the end came more quickly for it. "Mind you, we are about to run into disaster here. I give it another twenty minutes, give or take."

"I was about one years old, at the time, but I learned about it later anyway."

She leans her back against the railing, and tries to push away the feeling that she's forgetting something. It's oddly hard to think. If it wasn't, it would occur to her that this is yet another divergence of history thanks to the Angel Gate. Instead, she smiles at Balthazar.

"And you're up here at the railing?"

"I can't just leave. I feel responsible." He looks awkward. "Like I ought to see the whole thing through out of respect."

He shakes his head. "Obviously something's gotten mixed up, though. You're not supposed to be here, and I'm feeling a bit funny, myself. What's the last thing you remember?"

Fortescue raises an eyebrow for just a moment, wondering just how he feels responsible — she's no stranger to taking down transportation, but she's curious if he isn't either — and then there's the whole indirect mention of time travel — when his question distracts her. Hm. What was the last thing she remembered?

"I think I was sitting in the living room, and Dilandau was calling me some variation of harlot or tramp... so hard to keep it straight anymore... and... you know, that's the last thing I can recall." She shakes her head. "Not very helpful, probably."

For some reason, it's Dilandau's name that brings everything into sharper perspective. He stares at her for a moment, then shakes his head woozily. "Fortescue. Of course. We're still in the Cape, then? I truly thought..."

He breaks off to look around. "This all happened, though. This is my memory...or something along those lines."

"I think that's a matter of perspective," she says, of them being in the Cape, glancing out at the cold ocean around them. Fortescue's glad that she has her coat on, even if getting one from a friendly member of staff might only take a bat of her eyelashes and a few clever words. "But I, ah. Can't say I've ended up in someone's memories before."

Giving his shoulder a gentle poke, she smiles. "You seem quite solid. So either I'm not real or... I don't know, they laced our food with something."

"Can I check and see if you're solid, too?" Despite the disorientation, he can't resist the opportunity, giving an exaggerated waggle of eyebrows just to emphasize the innuendo. "If this is some sort of game the place is playing, let's hope we're not stuck in it."

He looks around for Jazz, remembering he was there a moment ago. And isn't that odd? Who brings their cat into the subconscious with them? Unless he's just a fragment, too. Somehow, though, Balthazar doesn't think so.

Jazz is still gnawing at the pile of salty rope he's found, seemingly contented as his alley-toughened teeth attempt to destroy a decent section of it. Surely philosophers have waxed poetically about what it is pets dream of — and here Jazz is, chewing on dream-rope, purring loudly as he does it. Or perhaps there's nothing more poetic and life-reflecting than a cat destroying something.

"Of course. Only fair," Fortescue chuckles, her smile looking slightly more like a smirk for a moment. "Though I might have to do some appropriate wide-eyes if you put your hand through me like a ghost."

To a cat, certainly! Balthazar watches for a moment, then turns back and takes up the invitation, slipping an arm around Fortescue's waist and planting a light, almost-chaste kiss on her cheek. "...hm. Solid, and quite warm. Let's get off the deck before the ship collides with the ice, and try to sort this out."

"And how did you do that last time?" she wonders curiously, smiling at him, before calling, "Jazz!"

Her cat, looking disgruntled, walks over to them, peering up curiously. From his expression, it's clear he hopes that this is a good diversion from his delicious rope. He's definitely not a facet of the dream, as he jumps up onto the railing and gives a soft mrowl.

"Which, the kissing?" He winks and lets her go, sobering at once. "I flew, actually. I mean...I waited and watched the ship go down. Stayed until the Carpathia showed up to help the survivors, in fact."

He'll even give her the full explanation, but he has a question first. "Jazz isn't just a cat, is he?"

Maybe it's more of an observation than a question.

"Pfft, I imagine you did that well enough," Fortescue chuckles, giving the end of his nose a gentle and teasing tweak. Jazz climbs up onto her shoulders, as if he owns the place. Which he might as well. But evidently the rail is cold, as he buries his paws in the folds of her coat.

She gives him a look, at Balthazar's comment, and nods. If she's going to ask about how a man with no visible wings flies — really, how could you not — she might as well be forthcoming.

"Not just, no."

The corners of his eyes crinkle with amusement at the tweak. "Let's get somewhere warmer."

He offers her his arm, and moves off slowly to enable Jazz to keep his perch. "He's a familiar, then, or something else entirely? I thought there was something unusual about the two of you, but I was never sure. Anyway, nearly everyone in the Cape is unusual in some way."

Jazz is used to hanging on for dear life — a lot of the time, that isn't an exaggerated way of putting it. Though they don't have a bond that allows true communication, Jazz and Fortescue have an unconscious level of understanding with one another. She knows how far she can push him. He digs in with his claws, mewling quietly. Going somewhere warmer will agree with his short fur.

"Not exactly," she muses, taking Balthazar's arm, thinking of paintings with witches and cats. That was entirely fictional, where she came from, but the idea had started because of someone, presumably, who had also chosen a cat, once upon a time. She goes for a blunt explanation. "Jazz is my soul carrier. Mine was extracted, in a process called exanima, because the magic I use harms it. He keeps it safe for me."

Not completely fictional where Balthazar comes from, but witch culture isn't exactly his area of expertise, either. What Fortescue describes is even more foreign, but it does make sense in a way. "That's a lot to ask of a cat, isn't it? Not that I'm criticizing."

Actually, it's like an angel using a vessel in some ways.

"A case could be made for it. But under normal circumstances, he doesn't seem strained."

Her answer is a little cautious, mostly because she really hadn't wanted the whole thing to begin with. But she had agreed to take the job so that her sister would be cured and cared for. It was just one more thing that she had had to do, to begin training for it. The suggestion of an alley cat had been pure sarcasm, at first, that the religious official had taken seriously.

Now, of course, Jazz is probably her best friend. And when the connection is tampered with, they both have problems.

"The exception is when he gets too far from me. But keeping him nearby is rarely a problem."

"Maybe it's worth it to have a constant companion," Balthazar murmurs, and pulls open a door, holding it for her. "And all the tuna you can eat."

"I suppose I owe you an explanation now. I'm an angel, you see. An ofan. A short while ago, I was sent to unsink the Titanic, and then to resink it. Which is a long story, I'm afraid, but." He gestures loosely around them. "Here I am again."

"...I'm almost afraid to ask, but was there a film in your world?"

Fortescue runs her fingers through her hair, warming herself now that they're inside. Jazz mewls and jumps to the floor, puffing out his hair. As much as it can be, at least. She's about to mention that Jazz gets plenty of food he never had as an alley cat when she, instead, listens to Balthazar's explanation. It easily pushes out any thoughts of cat food.

Is he pulling her leg? ...no, he seems to be serious.

She frowns, although it looks more thoughtful than anything else. That the Church of the Empire has equal stakes in their nonsense being true as anything else... well, she's glad they're not here to know it's true. The pompous, arrogant pricks have enough attitude as it is. Although...

"Now that I do think about it, I'm positive the Titanic was an airship," she muses, "in my world. But we definitely don't have angels there. Or cinema about an emergency water landing." Her frown shifts to an amused smile. "You're not quite the picture that the Church of the Empire paints."

"No film? Good, good. I suppose it could happen yet, but at least you've dodged that bullet thus far." He gives her his most charming smile, which is frequently a sign that he's trying to hide a genuine emotion beneath. He closes the door behind them and leans against the wall of the corridor. "Different worlds, I suppose. I'm not the most typical of my brethren. I ran away from home a couple years back."

He holds out his arms as if to let her get a better look. "This isn't my true form, either, but I assume you were expecting something brighter, with giant wings and possibly a flaming sword?"

She smiles back at him, and there's no mistaking that it's an appreciative one. "I think I remember fire somewhere, at least. But you're so much better, love. On the fact that you haven't smited me into oblivion alone."

The Church of the Empire frequently uses its sermons to condemn whatever ideas it wants, and magus' were certainly on that list. She does remember reading a decree about angels smiting magus' on their way to Hell... or something of that nature. Honestly, they changed their metaphors every other week. It's a wonder they have followers at all.

But nonetheless, nonexistent as they are in her universe, angels are the weapons of the church to strike fear in the hearts of its masses. That angels can be like Balthazar — that is to say, drinking and generally polite — makes Fortescue wish she could tell the Church all about it. Just to rub their faces in how horrified they would be.

Or maybe that's what her father would want her to do. He'd always disliked the Church on a visceral level.

"That you don't fit the picture is a good thing. The Church, ah..." She considers. Hopefully badmouthing religion in front of an angel isn't offensive. Then again, they've shared drinks. "They twist everything to favor what they like. And they're sort of a dying species. Or they would be, if they didn't get some small measure of government support."

It's under the table, and she's one of the few people to know about it. But they're the only ones who study how to exanim, and so keeping them around is, from her superiors' point of view, important.

"I'm not the smiting kind," he says almost gently. "Even when I was in Heaven's good graces, it wasn't my preferred task."

Frankly, he sees no reason she'd deserve a smiting anyway, but he's aware he doesn't know her that well. "It's funny, isn't it, how codifying the eternal into earthly religions makes it seem like a terribly exclusive club. In my experience...well, Heaven does love the devout Abrahamic set, but it's not always that simple. Mind you, I can't wholeheartedly recommend Heaven as a final destination, anyway..."

But he's rambling now. He shakes his head dismissively and offers her his arm. "We don't have long before the ship strikes the iceberg, I'm afraid, but if you'd like a tour in the interim?"

consumed by either fire or fire

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