singillatim | but a strange light in the sky was shining right into my eyes

but a strange light in the sky was shining right into my eyes

JANUARY 2024 EVENT

PROMPT ONE — THE AURORA: NASCENCE: Following the strange dream at new year, a three-day Aurora takes place. During which, Interlopers discover a possible ally in the mysterious woman heard in the static and heard in the dream — potentially earning new abilities.

PROMPT TWO — ADUST: The Interlopers find out what happened to the owners of long-destroyed Milton House in the form of hauntings.

PROMPT THREE — THE VISITOR: Interlopers find themselves with an unwelcome visitor — a shadow doppelganger here to make everything absolutely worse.

THE AURORA: NASCENCE

WHEN: January 13th - 15th.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: potentially disturbing dreams; dreams of being burned alive; some minor supernatural horror; some minor ‘ghost’ horror/hauntings; death of npcs in various ways including suicide, murder or exposure to elements.

In the middle of the month, it happens. A herald. The noise starts: faint at first, but then growing louder. An ethereal, high-pitched chorus of sounds difficult to place. There’s a kind of electrical buzzing with it all, a low, endless hum punctuated with cracks and pops. The sky is alive with sound, and with it comes the swirling streaking of colour against the inky black of night: The Aurora has come.

Much of what happened previously happens again: Streetlights, illuminating the town’s roads; lights in stores and homes will come alive, buzzing and flickering at times. Previously abandoned cars will turn on, their headlights blaring. Electronics that had previously seemed broken flick on — and whilst there are no broadcasts available on televisions, and the radio waves only drone on in static, both only occasionally blaring standard emergency broadcasts. Any computers and phones will turn on, but will have no internet or reception. Instead, Interlopers may find texts and emails — many of them unsent. The everyday lives of their users stored within, now readable.

There are still some instances of the ‘ghosts’ from the previous Auroras, but they are now only faint outlines, and far fewer in number. However, whilst the Aurora would usually only last until the next morning on sporadic nights over the month — this time it will last for a full three days. The world is plunged into darkness, a seemingly endless night with only the Aurora to light the skies.

On the second night of lights and noise, a voice calls out to you: static-like, and distant — as if someone speaks over a radio. A woman’s voice. It is the same one you’ve been hearing for a few weeks now, but finally it is far stronger than the scant whispers of name and the word ‘help’. She is far clearer now.

“You.” she says. She may whisper your name, too. “I see you.” You’re unable to speak back, the communication is only one way. She sounds upset, but there’s something more… a kind of wonder, perhaps.

”It’s not just a regular aurora borealis, but then you probably worked that out already, haven’t you? It’s so much more than that. Everything is… changing.”

”I don’t know how you can go back. But— but I can help. Maybe. Maybe I can make this place easier, somehow. I need help, but I’m stuck—” There’s frustration in her voice for a moment. ”It took from you. Took you away. It doesn’t always have to take. We can take, too. Sleep. I will help you take back. You will survive this. You will not go into the Dark. This is not the end.”

You have no idea what that means, for the most part. But you might just end up taking the chance and doing as the woman asked, even if it’s difficult with the noise and light with the Aurora. Sleep, and a dream may come to you.

FREE RUNNER: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape. You dream you are a magnificent stag, galloping through the snowy woods with ease. You seem to go on and on, never tiring, never slowing. You feel like the wind, or perhaps the very wind itself carries you. Not once do you stumble or fall, even when the snow is thick and deep, or the ground is shaky and uneven beneath you. You feel free.

When you awaken, you feel the most refreshed you’ve ever felt since you first came here. For the final day of the Aurora, you are bursting with energy and even when the lights in the sky fade — that revitalised feeling within you remains. There’s something within you that understands: you are the Free Runner. The ground will yield beneath you, your energy will not desert you, the wind will carry you.

LIGHT BRINGER: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape. You dream of sitting by a lonely campfire in the mouth of a cave at night, warming your hands. As you sit, a strange feeling comes over you, a desire to reach out to the flames. And so you do, reaching with both hands into the fire — gripping at the white-hot embers. It burns you, and for a moment there is blinding hot pain as the fire suddenly explodes around you, consuming you whole. But the pain soon stops. The fire doesn’t burn you. No, you have become the blaze — your body warmed. You burn bright enough that the darkness around you turns into day.

When you awaken the next morning, you feel warmed and comfortable. As if even the coldest of winters couldn’t reach your bones. The warmth remains even when the Aurora ends, and you are left with the innate understanding:you are the Light Bringer. The power of flame is at your very fingertips. You master the light, life, warmth.

AURORA CALL: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape. You dream you are standing in the very sky itself, at the Aurora’s height. Colour and sound twirls around you, within you — and you feel it curl into your body. Your head fills with noise, a chorus of voices calling out, snippets of conversation echoing within you. A woman’s voice calls to you, it is the same voice that spoke to you before you slept: “Don’t you understand it now? We are all connected. The Aurora connects us.”

And you do, you do understand it.

When you awaken, you feel connected to the world around you. To the very people who live amongst you. You feel less lonely, a kind of kinship with others. You have heard the Aurora’s Call and you have answered it, unlocked a connection with your fellow Interlopers. You will be heard.

NOTHING: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape, but only for a moment. The edges of your vision begin the blur with black, slowly closing in until everything goes dark and you fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. You awaken, and although you feel rested, as if the dreamless darkness has helped you feel a little more ready to take on the day — nothing else about you has changed.

ADUST

WHEN: From mid-month to month end.
WHERE: Milton House.
CONTENT WARNINGS: fire; house fire; death of a child/children; hauntings; ghosts; mental manipulation; illusions of burning/being burned; potential injuries via falling/unstable building collapsing.

There is a reason why it is advised to avoid Milton House other than the simple fact that it’s a miracle the house is still standing. Once one of the largest buildings in the town of Milton, it is now a former shell of what was once a fine and grand house. It has lain in ruin for many years, dilapidated and host to a great deal of fire damage.

While he is in town, Methuselah will not speak of the place, but he often looks sad when it has been brought up in conversation. “A great tragedy.” he will say before falling into a pensive silence. “A blackened mark on the town’s memory.” He does not wish to say much more of what happened: sometimes there are things that are just too painful. He will continue to advise the ruin is left alone, out of respect, and the fact that the place is a danger.

Of course, advice will not stop anyone from attempting to get into the ruins and exploring the house, even if it is in fact highly dangerous.

The sounds of voices and whispers may be enough to pique anyone’s interest. You're sure you heard something, maybe you should go to check it out?

It is true in the fact that the house itself is incredibly dangerous structurally: floors and stairs may give way and you’ll find your foot (and half of you) falling right through the floorboards. Damp and rot that have long since set in, and it will be dangerous to breathe in. But you’ll find that the house itself is pretty ordinary: this was once a family home. Just about the entirety of the house and its contents aren't salvageable, but you’ll be able to find out a little about who once lived here.

There are faded, half-destroyed photos that show a family of five: a father, mother, and three young children all under the age of ten. The father with warm, beaming smiles, the mother has kind eyes, the two oldest boys with toothy grins much like their father, the younger girl looks shy, wanting to hide against her mother. They look happy. Just a typical family. In a world where so many strange things are happening, it feels so strange to look upon these family photos and around this home to realise that they simply lost their home in a house fire.

But as you hold a family picture, or some half-destroyed trinket: a toy, a shoe, a book, a vase, you’ll find the item will suddenly catch alight, bursting into flames in your very hands. The flames do not burn you, and as you discard the item, it will fall to the floor as if nothing had happened.

Then, it comes to you. Here and there. Different sensations that stop and start suddenly: the house groans and creaks around you; the smell of smoke enters your nose; the sound of fire cracking and popping with a roar fills your ears; the sensation of heat against your skin; the clawing and suffocating feeling in your lungs that makes you cough and choke; the sounds of terrified shrieks of children echoing above you. Feelings flood you: fear, panic. When you next turn around, the entire house is aflame around you, and you can’t tell if this is real or if you’re reliving some terrifying memory.

You need to leave, get out of here. For some, it will be what comes naturally. You’ll have to fight through the flames and escape the house before it burns down completely around you. You’ll have to fight your way out, find an exit not already consumed by flames — through a window, perhaps. Crashing out of the house and into the snow, you’ll look back and see Milton House just as you entered it: nothing more than a half-burned ruin.

But for others, there will be another pull. You are drawn upstairs, to the screams of children. You need to get to them, to help them, save them. You will battle through the flames, heading towards the ruins of what was a child’s bedroom, or towards the bathroom. Inside either, you will find a figure cowering, engulfed wholly in flames: one in the bathtub or one in the closet. You recognise them as the two sons from the family pictures.

Mom. They will call you. Or Dad. They weep, terrified of the flames. I’m scared, I’m scared. I want the fire to go away. Help me. Stay here.

The tragedy of Milton House is before you. More than just a fire. What is more tragic than the death of a child? What silences voices? Breaks spirits? Leaves one helpless to act in the wake of such a passing?

There is something to be done here. You are not so powerless. Calm the child. Offer gentle assurances. They will get out. They are safe. You are there for them. You will stay. Embracing them will set you alight. Too hot. Too bright. It will hurt, but you won’t burn. But don’t let go; holding them will eventually calm them down enough for the flames to grow dim, to slowly ease their spirits to rest.

Soon enough, the flames will go out and the child will disappear, leaving you alone in a decaying, dilapidated room.

In the churchyard of Milton, there is a family grave by the name of Barker. Three lie within it: Thomas it reads, and his beloved sons, Patrick and Christopher.

THE VISITOR

WHEN: The month of January.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: erything absolutely worse.
THE VISITOR — CONTENT WARNINGS: supernatural beings; dream-related horror/disturbing dreams; doppelgangers; themes of depression; themes of self-harm; themes of isolation; potential themes of suicide.

It seems the dream of the New Year and the Aurora dreams are not the only odd sleep-related instances occurring this month. You first notice that something is off when a strange dream pulls you from sleep. The dream may feel like any particular dream you have, whether it be a usual nightmare or strange concoction your brain has conjured up for you this night. Maybe it’s a dream you’ve had before, maybe it’s a new dream entirely. But no matter the dream, there is one thing that is odd about it. In tiny moments within the dream, you notice that there is something different, something that feels out of place. Something is there that shouldn’t be.

A figure, tall and silent, entirely made of shadow stands lurking in the background. It looks human, but there is not much more that you can really describe further. It is a sad, unsettling presence.

When you awaken, eyes bleary from sleep, and you look about the room, to the bottom of your bed, for a half-moment you see that figure standing there silently. That unsettling sadness permeates the room, and after a few seconds of blinking and sitting up — the figure disappears. Perhaps it was just some trick of the mind, some half-awake illusion.

But the next time you sleep, it appears again. The same figure, the same emotions surrounding it. And when you awaken, it stands at the bottom of your bed once more. Only this time, it lingers, and you find yourself staring down the figure before it disappears once more.

Over the next several days, the presence continues to linger more and more. It stands silently in the corner of the room of your home; it hovers by the window, staring out into the snow; it stands in the middle of the road as you go about your business. More and more, it is there. Always standing, always watching — silent and sad.

No one else seems to notice it, only you. And over time, the shape of it seems to change — the vague, undefined shape of it slowly shifts into something you recognise. The same hair, the same height, the same way it holds itself: it is exactly like you. A perfect doppelganger, a second shadow. And with it, it exudes an oppressive sadness, a particular kind of loneliness. It is suffocating, bleeding into you.

It makes you withdraw from the world around you, from the people around you. Perhaps you stop spending time with others, retreating into solitude. You hide from others, keep to yourself. You find yourself not sleeping at all or perhaps sleeping too much. Perhaps what little you already eat becomes nothing. The shadowy doppelganger draws ever closer to you, close enough to touch you - ever hovering at your shoulder. Its presence bores down on you, making you feel small and more and more alone even with its ‘company’. No one else can seem to see it but you, mentioning it to others will earn odd looks, or even concern. It seems you and your double are alone together.

Hopefully, those around you will notice the change in you. How you stopped reaching out, how you’ve stopped taking care of yourself. Hopefully they will see something isn’t right and reach out. You are doomed to the doppelganger's company otherwise.

However, those around you can push the shadowy double away, and can break its influence and hold over you. Genuine care and concern for you will have it shrinking back. Perhaps it is a kind word, perhaps it is the gentle but insisting coaxing to eat. Perhaps it is an attentive ear to listen to your thoughts, to how the presence has made you feel. Maybe it is even the simplest of touches, an embrace or the holding of a hand, the grip of a shoulder. Continued connection with you will slowly have the visitor’s power diminish.

And hopefully it is done before it is too late, or it may be all too easy to fade into the Long Dark.

FAQs

THE AURORA: NASCENCE

1. Aurora Feats are now unlocked! Please see the following page for more information. Aurora Feats are completely optional.

2. Interlopers will only receive ONE Aurora Event. The only time this is available is this month. After January, players will have to wait for the next Feat round for another chance at an Aurora Feat.

3. This Aurora will last a full three days. It will be a period of only night.

4. For more information on the ghostly loops seen during the Aurora, see this previous event, under 'The Aurora: Aftershocks' prompt.

5. For new players who would like a little extra context regarding the woman can look at December's Tales From The Northern Territories, under the 'New Happenings in December' section.

ADUST

1. Characters will not be physically burned in the fire, but only feel as if they have been. The effects of this illusion will last a short time after they're out the house before they will fade.

2. The only real injuries characters can sustain will be from fall damage, or if the floor gives way and their feet go through, etc. whilst in the house.

3. The children cannot leave the house. They will be too scared to leave. In addition, they are tethered to the house, given that this is where they died. Simply being calmed/comforted is the best way to help them and they will disappear after that.

THE VISITOR

1. An Interloper's Visitor can't be seen by anyone but the Interloper themselves.

2. The Visitor can be spoken to, but it will not speak back. It cannot be interacted with and is intangible.

PLOTTING POST

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He can remember his mother's words like a hot brand on his skin. He should never have tried to read her mind, but he did it anyway, because he likes to torture himself. And then he needn't have, for she told him to his face something worse than what she had been thinking. It hurt because it came from her.

His name is known, and there is more specific personality to the words now. This is someone known to him. Clearly Louis has found himself not a target of telepathic communication, but eavesdropping. Louis doesn't remember trying to read anyone's mind. He can't turn it off, and this is alarming.

The homophobia, well, that hurts too but was not unexpected, if it is who he thinks it is. Rorschach is very concerned with appearing masculine with a capital M. Louis knows the type, and it's not his; he prefers men who are more easygoing, or mysterious, or at least goddamn polite. It's only concerning to Louis if something gives Rorschach reason to go after someone who is different. Louis reminds himself not to count on him if times get tough. Yet he remembers the taste of his blood and the stubborn beat of his heart and emeralds--

Lord Almighty.

With no sign of anyone outside to save Louis from the inevitable conclusion, he strides reluctantly to where Rorschach is sitting, trying not to grip Dickinson too hard lest he damage the book of poems. He's got a crease forming between his brows. Vampire skin lacks fine lines, but the sculptor's chisel can slip in a few strategic places if a fledgling is young enough.

"Mind tellin' me what you're readin'?" he asks tightly, though he can see the cover now anyway. Detective story. All the confirmation he needs.

Rorschach had absolutely no idea that Louis could hear his thoughts. He just expected his private thoughts to stay just that. There was a few more errant ones as he saw Louis coming back towards him. "He really does look quite handsome. Like one of those old Greek sculptures, as if someone carved him out of marble. Is that a vampire thing as well or did he just get lucky with how he's ended up looking? Oh, he's--"

And then the thoughts fizzled out again as Rorschach watched Louis come back over to where he was at, his focus instead on what the vampire was saying. He closed the book and silently held it up so Louis could read the cover. The Count of Monte Cristo. A tale of resilience and revenge. No wonder Rorschach was reading it.

Dickinson isn't his usual pick, but Louis finds her verse infectious. Claudia reads her. She, too, is an odd one out with a secret vivacious inner life. Louis goes for grand sweeping stories, or highly personal contemporary narrative, or some philosophy. Dante and Shakespeare are safe to talk about in mixed company, and the Bible of course. But Louis also reads Alexandre Dumas, Langston Hughes, Colette, Charles Baudelaire... He even read a trite book on marriage in search of consolation when his own was failing.

So: Dumas. Louis has read him. What could they desire beyond their liberty? He remembers the lines about the inspector (later detective), imprisonment, liberty, and the sailor Dantès transforming himself into the vengeful Count. Louis did not expect he and Rorschach to share reading material, or that he would have such a rich inner monologue. It absolutely does not sound like him at all, but who else could it be? Is his terse verbal expression all an elaborate act?

Louis's jaw works. What is Louis going to do, exactly, march over and make his case? Insist he has no evil intentions, that a homosexual is simply a person, and that he has no power (anymore) to play any vampire mind tricks? If it were as simple as insisting on one's right to be respected, he wouldn't feel the need to hide that part of himself in the first place. This helplessness makes him feel trapped, angry, and tired.

He leans down a little, still frowning. "Nice book. You been starin' at me, I can tell. Makes a man feel uncomfortable. Is it anythin' to do with what happened in the cave?"

Edited 2024-01-11 11:40 (UTC)

Rorschach could feel his heart thump just a little bit faster in Louis's company. He was glad that the man had no idea as to the expressions that went on beneath the mask that he wore, though he seemed to have picked up on the annoying habit of being able to tell when Rorschach was looking at him despite his eyes not being visible. He wondered what the vampire wanted to talk about and was unhappy to discover it was the subject Rorschach least wanted to discuss.

He frowned, an expression that revealed itself by the looping patterns of his mask, all the curved lines and jagged blots on it facing downwards. The pattern held itself still for a few moments longer than the others that usually crossed it, a sure sign that Rorschach was emoting beneath the fabric.

He had only one answer to give Louis. "No." At the same time he said those words, his mind automatically thought: "Yes." He refused to say anything else out loud, heightening that dissonance between everything he said out loud and everything he didn't say but kept inside. His mind was still projecting loudly. "What else does he expect me to say? That I keep thinking about it? That part of me enjoyed that strange experience? I never let anyone get that close to me. I'd sooner break their arm and leave them howling in pain like a beaten dog. Being touched always burns like an iron. But for some reason I let him in and it didn't hurt as much. What does that say about me?"

Even in his own mind, Rorschach couldn't go the one logical step further, to acknowledge the truth of the matter. There was too much trauma and repression there for him to even consider that part of him might be attracted to other men.

It's a little mesmerizing how the spots move, and Louis doesn't know how to read them. They're not like the clear jeweled facets of a vampire's eyes, very different, but it is a feast for the eyes backdropped behind that dizzying polyphonic NO-YES.

There was a time, long ago, when the only man Louis confided in was his brother. Not even a priest heard his struggles. Lily was his confessor, Lestat his escape from the cold, and then one fateful night he did not need to worry about the cold anymore. He became the cold dead thing that sparks fires in others because they cannot comprehend what he is.

Louis straightens in a motion that is almost backing off, away, if only he could leave. Something meanspirited in Louis could play with Rorschach, as Lestat does with humans, feign ignorance as he uses words like spikes. Sometimes Louis does feel that violent detachment from humans in this absurd savage garden of a world. But it's hard to threaten a man in a turmoil very familiar to Louis's old one, and he never had Lestat or Claudia's penchant for stalking and spying. Eavesdropping gives him no thrill, it just unsettles the waters of his mind.

"It means you're human, and humans crave love and the well-regard of others, whatever they might say," he feels compelled to answer. "I shouldn't have to hear your thoughts, but you broadcastin' so loud. How?"

"Stopped being human a long time ago." He answered automatically, not realizing for a few moments afterwards that Louis had essentially answered the thoughts he'd been having instead of what he'd been saying verbally. There were no other accompanying thoughts to go with that statement. Clearly, Rorschach believed what he was saying to some extent, though how much wasn't quite clear.

Then Louis said something that didn't make any sense at all. "Huh?" Again, no actual thoughts to accompany what he was saying, just the emotion of confusion radiating outwards from his mind. He was just plain confused and he gave the vampire a sideways glance like he wasn't sure if he was crazier than Rorschach himself was at this time.

"Emeralds," he says emphatically. "On a--jeweler's table. And other more disrespectful words. I can hear your thoughts. I shouldn't be able to. I don't want to."

He gestures uselessly with his hand and shifts his weight restlessly.

"You don't even speak like your true self, what are you hidin'? What do you mean you're not human? You tasted--tasted human."

He regrets saying that, but it is what it is. Rorschach said this clear as a bell. Maybe Rorschach is the crazy one running around believing he's not human, and not what he'd initially thought of Louis.

Fuck. Louis could hear his thoughts, for hadn't he been thinking that very thing not a few minutes before? How was that even possible? He hadn't-- Then he sat up a little bit straighter where he was sitting. Wait. "The dream." That thought came through, short as it was. Hadn't he felt something strange after the dream? Was that what that woman had meant? Some help this strange ability was!

Typical. He should have known better than to trust a woman. They were sly and capricious creatures at the best of times, especially this one with godlike powers.

He sighed heavily and ran a hand down his face. Well, that was it. Time to wander off into the woods and die of exposure or get eaten by a bear or anything that was more preferable to having this conversation right now. Unfortunately, there was nowhere else for him to go. So it was one question at a time, and with a hope that the earth would just break open and swallow him whole in the meantime. "Hard to talk. Disconnect between my mind and my mouth. Spent too many years alone, talking to no one but myself." Between the isolation and his slowly crumbling sanity, something had just broken inside of Rorschach that couldn't be repaired when it came to talking normally. Anytime he tried to get the words from one place to another, it felt like they never came out right.

He was about to speak again when he decided to try projecting his thoughts, this time. It would make it easier to explain what he meant by not being human anymore. He looked upwards and it was clear he was making eye contact with Louis. With some difficulty, he managed to speak again in his mind. "Something happened to me ten years ago. About as bad as it could ever be. I'll spare you the details unless you don't want to sleep tonight. But let's just say there was a few bodies left afterwards. A little girl, the man who butchered her, and who I used to be. After that, there wasn't much left of a human being. Only what I turned into. This." He gestured to his face. Perhaps that didn't make a whole lot of sense but it was the only explanation he could really go into without getting into details of the Blair Roche case.

What dream? Louis doesn't doubt this crazy man has some wild dreams. Maybe it was sex--

Let's not think about that. Louis sets his book down on a table and paces. He's glad not to be fielding a very real accusation of mind reading. He could do that back home, but he doesn't need Rorschach to have yet another reason to mark him as an evil undesirable.

People can't understand him because they don't understand themselves. Louis's skin is smooth and unblemished except by the chill, his eyes and nails are like glass, and he simply reflects what people think in their hidden hearts. Louis, often numb and beset by dark moods, is simply existing.

Rorschach was transformed by something he won't touch even in his thoughts. Louis knows a thing or two about being transformed in the midst of trauma. He won't fault Rorschach for a speech impediment just like he wouldn't fault himself for needing blood to live. (But sometimes he does anyway.)

"Somethin' terrible happened and you use it as an excuse to call me things like 'sissy'? You think I used some kind of mind trick to seduce the blood out of you? I have no power over you. Your desire is your own."

He turns sharply, coat flaring in his wake, and paces. His heart aches about another who has suffered and come away different. Louis's heart will always be his downfall, sympathy even for the Devil. What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger. It just makes you tired.

He rallies. He's still upset. "I thought you might at least be tolerable because you can stand to be in the same room as me. There are libraries a man of my color can't even walk into. But you just the same as the rest."

He points at him, voice ringing despite not being raised.

"I have to fight for the respect others are given freely. I shouldn't be surprised, but I don't need this shit from you."

Rorschach stayed quiet and just listened. Louis's words shouldn't have hit home as hard as they did. But they did and hit him right where it hurt.

For once, he actually looked as small as he truly was, his body language reading as contrite even if there was nothing to be seen on his face. Louis certainly had a good way of invoking guilt in a person. Rorschach felt ashamed that his innermost thoughts had been heard and not just because they were meant to be private. Just because he wasn't expecting someone else to hear them didn't make them any less hurtful. Louis had mentioned what time period he came from, well before civil rights became a thing for most people in the U.S. People with his skin color had been treated terrible in the 40s. Hell, if he was being honest, things hadn't progressed nearly as much as they should have even in his own time period. No wonder the vampire was upset at the moment. It couldn't have been easy being Black and gay where he'd come from.

"I'm sorry." The telepathic words came through clear and without any other words or emotions trying to justify what he'd done. He didn't say anything else. Sometimes, the hardest thing to do was apologize when you knew you were in the wrong. But he figured he owed Louis that even if he didn't owe him anything else.

"This isn't about you." Not entirely. "It's--" He didn't finish the sentence. They both knew this was about him and the inner struggles he had with his own sexuality. That whole self-proclaimed 'not being human' thing made it difficult to acknowledge sexual attraction to either sex but especially when it came to men. "--And I'm not like that." Again, not entirely. He added on to explain a bit more. "Don't really prefer anyone on either side."

There was a slow, hesitant note of confusion in his voice. It wasn't faked. Rorschach was honestly confused because the way he felt towards a very select number of women (usually those admired and idealized from afar) was sometimes the way he felt towards some men. For someone who had a rigid black-and-white mindset like he did, this was an impossibility too great to reconcile.

I should have just left, controlled myself, Louis thinks. In a small town like Milton, he'd gone back to wanting to keep his business with men under wraps. Not that he was very open even when he was with Lestat, but he at least made peace with himself and was fine with people knowing they lived together.

If he were just lashing out, people could (and did) dismiss his anger and frustration as overreacting. But there is a suffering in his eyes whether he raises his voice or speaks quietly of it. Still, they could not see his eyes, only the color of his skin. So, he did not expect Rorschach to apply the best self-examination he could, and do it so quickly. His eyes flick back to him from where they had been boring a hole in the window across from him.

"Damn right it's not about me, the problem is you and whatever the hell's goin' on inside that head." Louis's stores of bedside manner and positive reinforcement have their limits. They can only endure so much so soon after... all this.

He crosses his arms, not like someone looking to make themselves bigger, but like someone looking to make themselves smaller. He avoids his gaze (well, the mask) again. Tell him you don't actually like men, Louis thinks, but he can't bring himself to say it. That feels like a betrayal--of Rorschach and the man Louis used to be. Even of Lestat and the years they shared together.

"It's none of your concern who I do or don't spend time with. If you enjoyed it, that's your thing. Ain't even that weird. You're not the first human to like it."

"Didn't enjoy it," Rorschach said with a slight snap to his tone, though still less gruff than he would have been otherwise, given he'd just endured a good tongue-lashing. Well, that was a damn lie, and they both knew it. But he was getting into a bit of an argumentative mood now.

"Just....confused." That was all. He refused to consider that he'd found an actual appeal in both having his blood sucked and having a handsome vampire (and he wasn't so idiotic as to deny Louis was handsome, he had eyes after all) that close to him had done something inside his head when it had happened.

Of course, the fact he'd gone his entire life since puberty not allowing anyone in physically or emotionally or to get that close to him meant he also had no baseline with which to address this new situation. It meant he kept getting agitated and unbalanced whenever he tried to qualify the situation to himself.

Louis wishes he had a cigarette, just something to do with his hands. He paces again. He's unclear how Rorschach feels about him, and this is bad, dangerous even. He thinks Rorschach is frankly unhinged and could catch him on a dark street if he felt like he could not suffer Louis to live. Louis would like to live.

"You keep tellin' yourself that, won't change nothin'. It's none of my business, except you made it my business, compared me to some megalomaniac in your thoughts."

He stops pacing. His eyes can be very piercing. Humans see their own souls reflected in their emerald facets.

"So. Given the opportunity, you would never do it again? You would feel nothin'? It does not come into your thoughts except as the mild torment of some bloodsuckin' insect?"

If Louis was unclear as to how Rorschach viewed him, so was Rorschach. He couldn't easily slot the vampire into a category in his mind. That made him irritable and aggressive, prone to anger when things didn't fit the rigid black-and-white structure he'd lived by for most of his life.

"Also compared your eyes to jewels. Wasn't all bad." Alright, that excuse sounded a bit feeble, but the fact his intentions hadn't been entirely awful had to count for something!

He shifted around under Louis's question, uncharacteristically fidgety when put into a situation he didn't like and hadn't asked for. Rorschach laced his fingers behind his neck and looked upwards as if hoping the roof held the answer he sought. He still pointedly wasn't looking at him when he answered very quietly. "....No. Not like that at all."

"That just makes it worse. Insects have beautiful eyes too, but we have no problem crushin' them."

Not even a person, just an insect to be squashed. This is how Louis feels, being picked apart and judged by someone who freely admits to murdering people. For someone like him, moral zealousness is a danger to be avoided.

He looks at Rorschach's hands trying to assuage awkwardness and covering his neck and only succeeding in the latter. It's a painfully human gesture, like the ones Louis only did out of habit and not because he was actually suffering from neck pain or a headache. This does not inspire compassion in Louis. He feels detached, almost cruel, though his brand of cruelty could never become quite that, and was leagues from Lestat's.

But he does take a single slow step forward, stopping to stand again with hardly a sound. His head cants ever so slightly with cold curiosity, and he's very still, the gestures and asymmetries of humanity forgotten. The effect is like watching a statue move.

"What's it like then?" he probes, because no one inflicts suffering on himself like Louis de Pointe du Lac.

"You're hardly a bug," Rorschach pointed out but he was still not really all that keen on arguing the point, not when he still felt rather small after the way he'd treated Louis, objectifying him and demeaning him in turns within his own mind. He deserved what he was getting at the moment.

Rorschach refused to say anything more on the subject. It was too much for him to get out in words. But he couldn't stop his brain from thinking and projecting those thoughts outwards, thoughts which were far easier to elaborate on instead of relying on the disconnect between his brain and his mouth that he usually relied upon. "I liked it and I don't know why." While it didn't transmit, his thoughts went back to how he'd grasped Louis on the shoulder during the rather intimate act. "I've never let anyone get that close to me physically before."

Which, if Louis was thinking that meant the man was a virgin, he was right on the money. And in more ways than one, it wasn't as if Rorschach had ever let someone suck his blood before or allowed the smallest bit of sexual interaction with another human being.

He expected silence or maybe shouting. Having one's blood sucked is pretty unusual. Louis hadn't expected him to be torn up about the intimacy, of all things. This mundane problem is proving to be more trouble than the supernatural one.

"Well, at least you liked it," he says sullenly.

To allow someone that close to a delicate part of the body, particularly where nerves gather together, is something creatures don't usually do with just anyone, humans included. He doesn't owe Rorschach anything, but it doesn't feel right not explaining.

"I tried to explain to you back then how it feels, but... there really is no explainin' it to someone who isn't a vampire. It's like tryin' to explain sex or a really good gumbo to someone who's never had it."

He presses his lips together. He did not expect to be Rorschach's first in any intimate respect other than the biting. "It is more than just a pleasurable thing. It is... the experience of someone's life, takin' it into myself, heartbeat for heartbeat. It's a... celebration of it. For a vampire, it is the ultimate experience. I never appreciated life, livin' it, when I was a mortal. Only when I became a vampire... did I have eyes to see and ears to hear. So to speak."

He half laces his fingers together as he stares down at them, looking like a somber monk in contemplation rather than a bloodsucking fiend.

"I don't expect you to understand."

Rorschach stayed silent and just let Louis talk. He tried to parse out some kind of meaning from the words but he really couldn't get it. Beneath his face, he chewed on the inside of one of his cheeks, agitated but not entirely able to understand the cause of where even that emotion was coming from. Sometimes, it was very difficult for him to compare the experiences normal people had with the life that he'd led up to this point, given how very different the way he'd chosen to interact with people even when he'd tried to be normal.

"No. Don't understand."

He lapsed into silence again, trying to find the right words. Even his own mind, right now that was difficult. Communication was never easy for someone like him who had let their verbal skills wither and die over the past ten years. He did at least try, the words coming from his mind now slow and quiet just like his normal speech. "I've spent such a long time disconnecting from any emotions that don't help me in my purpose that I can't...really understand what I was feeling in there. I don't...form connections with people. Not the way everyone else is capable of."

"Because you're 'not human'?" His eyes flick up to Rorschach, and his lips part as if he's about to say something further. He can't figure out what, so he lowers his gaze again. He doesn't exactly feel like making a dig, though it is more direct than his continued contemplation.

Being a vampire comes with limitations. He can no longer socialize with humans during the day. Intimacy carries a risk of biting, killing, for any vampire who hasn't yet mastered their instincts. As he ages, he must hide the fact that he doesn't age, eventually flitting from place to place, leaving his life behind. And there is the killing, and the long years as more and more of his humanity slip away...

Then he does find the words. "Separation from those who are shaped like us... Well, it's not as though every human likes sex, I think. But you know, I felt it, how could I not--you were human in that moment. Who knows better what makes up a person than someone who drinks the life from them? It's not just the mechanical need for blood, there is a... hunger there. Hunger for what is human."

His eyes indicate Rorschach as they briefly subtly widen.

"There inside you, but shriveled with disuse."

He listened to what Louis had to say. Rorschach could have gotten up and retreated from this conversation at any moment. Gone out into the snow and stayed there until he was sure that the vampire was gone. But that wasn't in his nature. So instead he found himself listening to things he didn't like hearing.

There was a sound from Rorschach when he mentioned something being inside of him that was human but shriveled with disuse that was more like a sullen growl from an animal than a human being. It was mainly because part of him knew the vampire was right. But admitting that? It was a whole different story.

"Been doing fine without it for years now. Don't want it. Doesn't need to change now," he said, still sounding just as sullen. Of course, it had been easier to do that in a city where he could just blend in as another anonymous lost soul amidst millions of others. A lot harder to do that in a small town where there wasn't more than seventy other people he could consciously avoid.

"As you please," he says quietly. He's not interested in asking him for blood again, wheedling like some beggar. Rorschach says he doesn't want it. And Louis is not interested in ferreting out Rorschach's pain. He's not his friend or his priest. He's a vampire who took his blood and liked it.

Louis could have left before now, and almost did. He picks up his hat. That's the signal he's going. Emily Dickinson sits forgotten on the table near Rorschach because Louis doesn't want to draw near him again. He thinks it might be too much for the bristly man, and Louis would like to keep his fingers.

After Louis left, Rorschach leaned back, groaning softly. He took off his hat and rubbed the top of his head, trying to process what he'd just gone through. Why was the air charged with that same tension he'd felt back in prison, always having to be on his guard and knowing anyone around him could potentially mean him harm? Louis certainly had a way with passive-aggressive remarks and cutting words.

He'd figure out all of this....tomorrow. Tomorrow was another day. Right now, he wasn't prepared to deal with what he was facing within himself, so he just wouldn't. For the moment, he just took Emily Dickinson, and stuck it on a shelf near the front with a short scrap of paper scrawled in his distinctive handwriting sticking out of it like a bookmark. 'Reserved for Louis De Pointe Du Lac.' Then he went back to his usual task of organizing the library.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

but a strange light in the sky was shining right into my eyes

spoilers about louis's mom

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cw: being in the closet sucks

cw: Ditto the above, it's internalized homophobia hour at the library

library new (repressed) gay club hotspot

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cw: misogynistic thinking, child death mentioned

cw: racism, homophobic slur (reverse uno)

cw: homophobia internalized & projected outwards +racism mentions

cw: homophobia + racism mentions

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