warriorscribe: (Pain of doubt)
Enoch ([personal profile] warriorscribe) wrote in [community profile] towerofanimus2013-01-08 02:34 am
Entry tags:

Water won't do a blessed thing.

Characters: Enoch and anyone
Setting: Various places in the lower tower and dorm floors 1-3
Format: Doesn't matter!
Summary: Enoch's been away at home. He had to bury his best friend's/lover's corpse. And lots of other corpses. He's kind of lost now.
Warnings: Enoch may be a little unhinged in spots? Also mentions of a suicide attempt in the linked fic and minor hallucinations from isolation, trauma, and despair if that's a warning.



Room 3-18 to dorm hallways/men's restroom floor 3/elevator

Enoch had thought as he lay there on Meridian's beach, long-since dry but unwilling to move, neither to attempt to die at Armaros's side nor leave the sea he was now interred in. He'd wondered, did this mean Earth was like this too? It was too grave a thought, but one that somehow seemed more likely after this. Emotionally exhausted long after the physical exhaustion had worn off, Enoch had simply stayed sprawled on the sand, the tide washing up deformed shells around his feet, and eventually his waist. They barely registered in his mind as he drifted in and out of sleep, cradled by the waves, the only sound that could bring comfort. Half-mad(at least) with loneliness and grief, just as he had heard the trace of a voice, sometimes the wind felt like the brushing of familiar fingertips on his body, and he moved, only slightly, turning onto his side to cup his hands over his chest as if holding a hand there, as he had when Armaros had pressed his hand there to show his affection while he was still alive.

He cried, but it was subdued. Tears silently fell from his closed eyes, his heart and mind too drained to send him into another panic. There was nothing left to tear up. Eventually, he slept again.

This time, he woke without his armor, wrapped up in too-warm cloak and blankets. With a collar around his neck. But the walls were metal and the bed was clean, and...he was back in Animus.

Enoch curled onto his side and held his hands against his chest as if still trying to cradle a hand there. He stayed there for several hours - there was no telling how long he might have stayed if he didn't once again have a body with a bladder that needed to be emptied and a stomach that needed to be filled. He got out of bed, and padded out numbly into the halls, heading first to the restroom and then up to the elevators, taking the stairs in an unhealthy-looking halting manner.


Floor 1, late morning

He had missed breakfast time, of course. So he stood in the kitchen, looking at the ingredients and trying to muster up the motivation to cook. Maybe waiting until midday would be a better idea.



Floor 11

Until then, he could be found, bundled in his cloak, sitting on top of his folded blanket on the still-icy eleventh level, the waterfalls frozen in huge columns of ice (his back was against one of them), the floor slick with what was normally a lake. Rainbows played off of the icicles that were water-encased dead flowers. It was strangely beautiful. But Enoch's gaze didn't seem to be on anything in the room. This room, with its flowing water, had held some sort of hope for him. And now, here it was, frozen and dead. It would eventually thaw, but Enoch didn't know how much the analogy would hold, and he wasn't particularly interested in running with it - it wasn't anything more than an idle connection in the back of his mind as it floated through the haze of pain and shock it had been introduced to over the last week.

He'd done all his crying back in Meridian. But now he wasn't sure what to do. He'd been assuming Armaros was alive somewhere, and all his goals were to reach him. To come back to him like Armaros had reassured him he would. He had come back to him - but not the way he wanted.

What else was there? He was sure God couldn't find him here - if He could, He would have intervened in the workings of Meridian. Was Earth still there? Maybe He had protected it from the..."power". If anyone could do that, it would be Him, of course. Earth was His creation, and Enoch doubted He would let it go down without a fight. Maybe the Tower the Fallen Angels built acted like the towers here, and helped ward it off - it had been one of the reasons he'd immediately thought to ask if the towers in this world did that.

Maybe Earth was safe. But...

...Armaros was dead. Even if he returned and completed his mission, he couldn't rescue Armaros from The Darkness like he'd sworn, because he wouldn't be there. His remains were in Meridian.

Enoch drew his knees up and slumped forward, burying his head in the arms he folded over his knees. He felt defeated.


Floor 1, noon

Enoch eventually followed his body's needs again, his gait less stilted and a general air of not-there about him instead of simply seeming numb. He could be found with a plate of spaghetti and a glass of tomato juice, watching the pasta slide right between the tines of his fork for a little while before actually putting effort into problem-solving and figured out wrapping the pasta around it worked in fairly short order. He ate slowly from there, seeming lost in thought as he chewed each new mouthful. He didn't really taste what he was putting in his mouth. His mind was somewhere else entirely.
tohko_amano: (apologetic)

[personal profile] tohko_amano 2013-01-22 07:01 am (UTC)(link)
He hadn't come off as the type to do that, but Tohko had been wrong in reading people before, and she knew that, when times got harsh, people did things that were out of character because they were in unbearable agony emotionally.

Tohko said nothing more, but stayed there as Enoch settled again.