ＥＮＧＬＡＮＤ♛ Arthur Kirkland (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
keepscalm) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
towerofanimus2013-06-06 11:25 am
keepscalm) wrote in towerofanimus2013-06-06 11:25 am
Entry tags:
10. for shame deny that thou bear'st love to any
Characters: [OU] England (keepscalm) and [OU] Zelda (sageprincess), closed.
Setting: Men's bathroom, backdated to June 3
Format: Action I think?
Summary: England did a phenomenally dumb thing and now he has to tell Zelda about it.
Warnings: Discussion of nation angst, character death (of a somewhat suicidal nature), body horror, and normal nasty Tower fare.
[Losing his retrieval unit was a bit of a task after the kind of trouble he got himself into. It took hours of careful manoeuvring before he could steal away into the bathroom without the soulless eyes of his stalker tracking him. He really considered not bothering with the whole charade, seeing as his escapade into the lower floors wasn't exactly a secret from the administrators; they had to revive him, after all. But, he didn't think Zelda would appreciate being eavesdropped on.
So, here he waits. He stands in front of one of the sinks and occasionally runs the water under the guise of washing his hands when people come in and out. In his head, he turns over what he's going to tell Zelda. He doesn't have a problem sharing most of it. The lobby, the bodies, the papers he took from the desk; that's all easy.
The hard part is going to come when he has to tell her the consequences of leaving the Tower, and how he knows about them. He's fairly certain she won't be happy about his recklessness.]
keepscalm) and [OU] Zelda (sageprincess), closed.Setting: Men's bathroom, backdated to June 3
Format: Action I think?
Summary: England did a phenomenally dumb thing and now he has to tell Zelda about it.
Warnings: Discussion of nation angst, character death (of a somewhat suicidal nature), body horror, and normal nasty Tower fare.
[Losing his retrieval unit was a bit of a task after the kind of trouble he got himself into. It took hours of careful manoeuvring before he could steal away into the bathroom without the soulless eyes of his stalker tracking him. He really considered not bothering with the whole charade, seeing as his escapade into the lower floors wasn't exactly a secret from the administrators; they had to revive him, after all. But, he didn't think Zelda would appreciate being eavesdropped on.
So, here he waits. He stands in front of one of the sinks and occasionally runs the water under the guise of washing his hands when people come in and out. In his head, he turns over what he's going to tell Zelda. He doesn't have a problem sharing most of it. The lobby, the bodies, the papers he took from the desk; that's all easy.
The hard part is going to come when he has to tell her the consequences of leaving the Tower, and how he knows about them. He's fairly certain she won't be happy about his recklessness.]
no subject
She doesn't want to go back to that lonely existence where she could talk to no one, could be close to no one, now that she's been able to rely on and confide in people.
Her own red-collared stalker is nowhere to be found when she enters the bathroom, disguised as requested. The deku nuts she's been provided may ultimately be fake, but they still work well enough in stunning retrieval units long enough for her to get away. She checks to make sure there's no one in the various stalls before finally approaching Arthur, leaning against one of the basins next to him. There's a hint of concern in her visible eye, but thankfully the disguise covers most of her expression. The slight hesitance in her voice, however, is hard to mask.]
... What is it you wanted to talk about?
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He shakes his hands over the sink idly to rid them of excess water. He's clearly a bit reluctant to look at her, his gaze fixated on his own wet hands. Eventually, he decides to get straight to the point. His voice is low; not quiet enough to be a whisper, but cautious about anyone that may lie in wait just outside the bathroom door.]
I got into the lower levels the night of the glamour failure.
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[That concerned expression is quickly replaced by surprise at Arthur's words - her brows lift and her entire body perks up a bit. So... is that why he was so fixated on the elevator that day? The thought hadn't even occurred to her to use that time to break in. She knew Dax's research was hidden somewhere in the residential levels, after all, and Ruana being awake meant that any infiltration attempt would likely end poorly.
... So, wait. Did that mean--]
What happened?
[Urgency finds its way back into her voice. It's not as though she doesn't have enough reasons to despise the head administrator, but the thought of Arthur facing that monster alone makes something dark and angry and not fitting for a being of light and magic swell in her heart.]
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Though he hears Zelda's urgency, he doesn't realise the full extent of it.]
That said, I crashed the elevator. [Normally he might feel a little sheepish at such a brutish execution of things, but his priorities aren't exactly skewed towards pointless pretence at the moment.] Ended up all the way at the bottom for my troubles. This place is probably as big going down as it is going up, judging from how long the fall was. [He dries his hands and takes his place back at the sink next to Zelda, crossing his arms and leaning back against it.
He pauses after that and glances over to her, his eyebrows furrowed in thought.] You've been down there quite a few times now. Where exactly did you go before? [Like he said, from the duration of the fall, there's a lot down there. And where he ended up looked like it hadn't been touched in a long time.]
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[Arthur, being done with pretenses is fine and dandy, but please think of the poor girl's heart. Just because she showed Buddha-like serenity in the midst of the glamour failure doesn't mean she can't still suffer from mood whiplash.
After getting over the casual admittance of crashing the elevator, the rest of what he has to say catches up in her brain, and she shakes her head, as if to clear it. All the way at the bottom, huh...?]
Hmm... The first time was when we ended up just outside of that labyrinth - I cannot say I was keeping track of how long it took to get there. [She was still relatively new to the Tower, and was running on emotion rather than logic.] The second time was when we eventually stumbled upon the Processing Room. The first elevator trip to the lounge area Ruana's library was connected to took maybe ten or fifteen minutes? The second elevator that led from there to the Processing Room was a much shorter trip - five minutes at most.
[Her voice quiets a bit then, because unlike the other two "visits" she's made to the administrative levels, she's not sure if they know of her third. The bathing rooms are supposed to be safe, but call it an instinctive need to be cautious.]
The third was when we went to retrieve what Dax left behind. The ride was much longer - forty minutes, at least - and it stopped once near the end, saying the exact level we were trying to access was "obstructed" before moving on to what I can only guess was a secret level Dax constructed to keep his systems safe.
[In short, all places where the administrators had often been.]
no subject
Smashed the control panel open and cut the wires. Apparently that sends the whole thing plummeting. [England that "what" was rhetorical, I'm pretty sure. Though hey, if Zelda ever wants to get to try and repeat his process with a bit more judgment and planning...
He listens dutifully after his clarification, mulling over the information she gives him. He can't remember exactly how long the fall took; he was in way too much pain to count the seconds, and even if he had, he was going much faster than a normal elevator ride would entail. Still, it says something when he was falling so fast and still felt like the fall would never end.]
It brought me to a reception area, from the looks of it. But no one had touched the place in— years, I imagine. Even the computer on the desk started to fall apart when I touched it. [And Zelda has seen the high-tech computers in this place. It would take a long time for one of those to disintegrate.
He hesitates at the next part. While he knows that neither he nor Zelda are exactly faint of heart, the implications of it are...rather uncomfortable, given recent revelations. But, eventually, he continues, his tone a tad solemn.] There were corpses everywhere. Not like ours— real ones, flesh and blood. One of them was still sitting at the desk.
[Meaning whatever killed them did it suddenly, for them to have died right where they were sitting.]
I don't know what did it, but none of them were recognisable.
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But his story is interesting. A reception area, of all things, at the bottom of the Tower... And, as grim as the description might be, flesh and blood corpses means those people were from this world originally - or at least, that's what the evidence thus far points to.
Her eyes fall to the ground as she thinks over his words, her mind already trying to puzzle out the implications. After a moment, her brows raise once more as a piece mentally slips into place.]
... The virus. It struck this world once. A thousand years ago.
[She would say "or so it's been said," but it all lines up too perfectly with the sort of things people have reported upon returning from their homeworlds.]
She is the only one that is still around from that time. At least, that we know of.
[And the more time goes on, the more she believes Ruana has to be the epicenter of the destruction. ]
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He wouldn't doubt that Ruana was somehow behind everything he saw while he was down there, given what she's proven to be capable of. But if she was, she hasn't been back down in a very long time. And neither have any of the other administrators. Besides...well, he'll get to that part. He sort of wants to put that off for as long as possible.
Still, there's one thing about the virus theory that strikes him as odd. The city outside looked perfectly normal (or at least, normal for this place). If the virus had killed off every living thing a thousand years ago, he would think it would have dilapidated since then, just like the lobby.]
It certainly looked like the aftermath of some sort of pandemic on the inside. [...and then, he hesitates again. Because, more terribly unfortunate implications...
England averts his eyes, staring into some point in the distance that seems far beyond the walls of the bathroom.] There was a door down there. [A pause (hesitation), and then he clarifies, almost tonelessly:] An exit.
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An exit-- no, an entrance. If this place Arthur went to was once a reception area, then people had to have been coming and going from there. But why? What was this place for before Ruana turned it into her own personal macabre playpen?
Arthur's general demeanor makes her keep her thoughts and questions largely to herself, however. It doesn't seem like this discovery was necessarily a good thing, by the sounds of it.]
You... went outside...?
[Her voice is quiet, breathless. In awe and fearing she is treading somewhere terrible.]
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...and there were more bodies outside. The door was covered in blood, front and back.
[Though he tries to slow down his explanation a little, there's a certain haste to it, just like there was to his initial change of subject. He knows he'll have to tell Zelda about it — they can't risk anyone forming an escape plan that way, because England's sure Zo doesn't have enough hands for a huge mob — but she won't be happy. And she definitely won't understand.
And to tell the truth, England isn't sure he's ready to own up to it. Because he's not sure he wouldn't have gone outside even if he did know the consequences.]
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She wants to ask, what's making you so anxious? But they've been together in this hellhole for nearly a year and a half. She might lack the context for it, but she knows he doesn't like feeling weak, or vulnerable, or out of control. So she holds off on the personal questions for now.]
I suppose we can take some sort of solace in that the people of the city are not apathetic to what is going on here. [She remarks dryly. No, they're just too busy being dead.] A tower upon a hill... it must have been fairly important to the city, to get that kind of placement.
[Hyrule Castle once stood on the highest point in Hyrule outside of Death Mountain, after all. She hesitates a moment, knowing she needs to ask what has rattled him so, but not quite sure how to go about it. Eventually, she settles on something she hopes is impersonal enough.]
... What stopped you from leaving?
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He might feel unnerved if he knew how easily Zelda was reading him, but then, he's never really aware of when he's become an open book. And it only gets easier when Zelda inquires as to why he didn't make a bid for freedom.
His lips purse into a thin line. She needs to know the truth. As does everyone else, or things could get out of hand. He doesn't know if it would be quite as painful for the others in this tower — not all of them are nations, so maybe it wouldn't be as bad.
But still, there would be no coming back from it, no matter if it hurt.
England seems to take a moment to gather himself, draw his shoulders up and try to at least look composed.] There was some kind of light— a searchlight, maybe, couldn't really tell. As soon as it turned on, the doors closed.
[Another break of silence. But this time, when he resumes speaking again, there's an eerie detachment, a jarring divorce between England and the words he's speaking. It might even be somewhat familiar to Zelda ('I think they've been drowning me'), if she cares to dredge up the memories of last June.] She wasn't lying when she said we would die if we went outside.
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She continues watching him carefully as he adjusts his posture, his tone, and speaks, taking note of the shifts and trying to come up with meaning for them. Perhaps it would unnerve him (it would certainly unnerve her), but, in this instance, it's better than accidentally saying something foolish, isn't it?
Of course, she regrets paying such close attention when the implications of what he's saying hit her like a truck.
"You'd really die."
Arthur almost...]
Oh, Goddesses--
[With that breathless exaltation, she drops all pretense of business. Without thinking, she throws her arms around his shoulders, squeezing them fiercely, as though she's afraid to let him go. He won't get much chance to reciprocate however, as she quickly returns to distance - though her hands remain firmly upon his shoulders - looking him up and down as though to check for injuries that obviously aren't there. At least not physically.]
Are you-- not all right, but...
[Her worry is obvious, even with the disguise covering the majority of her face, but she can't come up with the right words to voice it. Clearly, Arthur is not all right - she can recognize that disconnected tone, even if she's blocked out the event she remembers it from - but he's standing here trying to pretend like he is. What do you say to a man who's pretending like he didn't nearly crash his way into oblivion?]
... How?
[Her voice is small when she settles on the most obvious question. If he came face to face with death - true death - how is he standing here?]
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Of course he's not all right. But Zelda is well aware of that. She just can't understand how deep it really goes — because he really should have died down there. The fact that the pain was so real, so overwhelming, is proof enough that he should have been dead a long time ago.
He fixes his gaze on Zelda's arm, on his own hand lying there, like he wasn't consciously aware of when he performed the gesture or the fact that he performed it at all until just that moment. Though he's detached himself from the emotion involved with it all and fallen fully into cold, hard nation mentality, he can tell that Zelda is concerned for him. And apparently, he'd still like to alleviate her worries, if he can.
England searches his brain for what happened next. He can't be too sure of it (he wasn't really in the mindset to keep an eye on the details), but he's convinced of one thing.] Zo found me. He said he would save me.
And then he did, I suppose.
[For a certain definition of "save".]
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She hates it.
She almost wishes he would get angry, show the tumultuous rage that scared her so when she told him what she saw in Ruana's library. At least it would be something, and not this... hollowed out, vacant stare of a man who has seen too much, felt too much, lost too much.
In a sudden jerk, she bows her head, golden bangs veiling her eyes. Her fingers clench around his shoulders, ungloved nails biting into his sleeves as her arms tremble with the tension. She stays like that for a moment as she battles the emotional firestorm that threatens to break loose where his does not. Then, she sucks in a deep breath. Lets it out. The tenseness in her body begins to dissipate, and the vice grip she has on Arthur's shoulders relaxes.]
... I am so selfish.
[For one who seemed to be on the cusp of raging against this unfair world, her tone is understated, dry, self-depreciative. She really is selfish, terribly so, because--]
I am glad.