tryingitall: (artwork (trueform))
The Angel Balthazar ([personal profile] tryingitall) wrote in [community profile] kore_logs2013-06-22 08:44 pm

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.
blackmagus: (♒ thoughtful)

2!

[personal profile] blackmagus 2013-06-23 06:54 am (UTC)(link)
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.
hung_garian: (They call me Gabriel)

3

[personal profile] hung_garian 2013-06-23 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
bluesrat: (thinky)

2

[personal profile] bluesrat 2013-06-25 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
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!"
blackmagus: (♒ oh crap)

[personal profile] blackmagus 2013-06-26 02:12 am (UTC)(link)
"...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?"
undomesticated: (Look - Talking 3)

Heat

[personal profile] undomesticated 2013-06-26 05:04 am (UTC)(link)
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."
happytobleed: (trying to puzzle out complex adult thing)

1

[personal profile] happytobleed 2013-06-26 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
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?"
blackmagus: (♒ tired)

[personal profile] blackmagus 2013-06-26 06:20 am (UTC)(link)
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.
hung_garian: (Guess my invite got lost in the mail)

[personal profile] hung_garian 2013-06-27 07:19 pm (UTC)(link)
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."
undomesticated: (Look - Talking 2)

[personal profile] undomesticated 2013-06-28 01:24 am (UTC)(link)
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.
undomesticated: (Smile - Down 1)

[personal profile] undomesticated 2013-06-28 01:38 am (UTC)(link)
She was quick to notice that he didn't recognize her. This must be some part of his past, then. Maybe he was reliving a part of his life and she didn't quite fit into it. That he was treating her like this when he couldn't remember her only made her feel even more affection for him. He wasn't being lecherous or grabby or rude. If anything, he was being chivalrous, covering himself and seeing to her comfort.

She couldn't not smile at that, watching the door open with just a twinge of frustration. Stupid door. She wonders about that, about what would happen if she just pushed him back through it and sat on this side of it so he could enjoy his, um, happy time. Would she find herself back in the room? Would she be able to slip out of his dream? She wasn't sure, but she didn't want him to realize who she was or that she'd seen something he probably didn't want her to see.

"I can, uh, I can phone a cab. I'm fine. No drinking for me tonight. You should, um, go back to your... thing." Yes, his thing. His thing that she could smell all over him, the scents of multiple people mingled in with his own in addition to that raw and musky sex scent.
blackmagus: (♒ oh really?)

[personal profile] blackmagus 2013-06-28 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
"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?"
undomesticated: (Look - 6)

[personal profile] undomesticated 2013-06-28 05:40 am (UTC)(link)
"Um, no. No. I came... by myself." She was such a bad liar. She knew it. She just didn't have much experience in lying about anything other than 'I'm totally human'.

"Are you okay?" He looked tired and she wasn't sure if that was the seemingly copious amounts of sex he'd had showing or something else. Maybe something a little more sinister. Which made her sort of want to go back into the room and kick everyone out. Even if it was a past dream or a memory, she didn't like the thought of anyone doing anything bad to him, especially not when she'd found out that he died in the future in his world. She didn't like that one bit.

"Maybe you should sit down for a minute."
blackmagus: (♒ thoughtful)

[personal profile] blackmagus 2013-06-28 06:49 am (UTC)(link)
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."
hung_garian: (Guilty as charged)

[personal profile] hung_garian 2013-06-28 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
He sighs, a little huffy. It's himself he's frustrated with, not Balthazar, but being the tactful kind of person that he is it doesn't occur to him to articulate that. He wants to follow Balthazar's movement, to try to provide some kind of comfort, but comfort hasn't been his thing in a while. He's scared he'll just mess up and make things worse - that, if anything, is his thing these days. He withdraws as well instead. He should've known better than to expect to waltz back into his siblings' lives and be welcomed with open arms. They've already forgiven him for more than he deserves, and he's gotten careless with boundaries.

"You know that's not how I meant it. I didn't want to hurt anyone, I didn't think anyone would--" 'care', he'd been going to say, but that makes it sound an awful lot more self-pitying than he wants it to. "I guess I just didn't think. I'm sorry, for what little it's worth."

Not that it changes anything, and frankly it doesn't make it much better. Honestly, he hadn't considered the effect on anyone else. He'd just known that he needed to go, and when he'd seen the opportunity he'd taken it. There hadn't been a great deal of consideration of the consequences, and there should have been.

"We all would have stayed if we could. It wasn't that we didn't care. I love this family more than anything, all of you, I do, but I couldn't stay. I just wish there could've been another way. For all of us. Seems like in the end we all got screwed over."

He accepts, though, that that is in some part his fault. There was so much he could've done differently that would've saved lives, or spared feelings at the very least. He's not trying to shirk responsibility for it, least of all for how Balthazar feels: he understands, and he knows that had he been unselfish enough to just stay, things might have worked out differently. Perhaps everything would have been better - perhaps Raphael would be less broken and Heaven less cold and, here and now, Balthazar less hurt. He can't regret it though, not truly, and he can't (won't try to) deny that he's selfish. He can despise himself for it, and sometimes he does - more and more often here, now that he's faced with his siblings every day and the individual packages of guilt they all come with - but he can't say that, if he were given the chance to go back and change it all, he would have stayed. He'd still leave, even knowing the pain it'd cause, just to save himself the misery they'd all stayed and dealt with. But hey, not everyone can be a good person. He's come to terms with that.

"And you deserved a lot better than you got. If I could change it for you I would, but..." he shrugs helplessly. "Even my powers only go so far, kiddo. I'm sorry."

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