firstofitskind | MHA #6, Wednesday Morning

MHA #6, Wednesday Morning

On top of the general feeling of irritability that had been simmering since Monday morning, yesterday Liam had come down with a fever. And for someone who'd never really been sick before in his life, the experience was, uh, kind of terrifying? Also terrifying were the grey scaly patches that had started to show on his skin.

Which is why he'd opted to sleep on the couch last night, because whatever-the-fuck this was, he wanted to minimize the risk of Verity getting infected. He'd learned his lesson with regards to doing things like leaving 'for her own good', which is why he hadn't gone with his first instinct which was to get as far away as possible.

'Sleep' was maybe a bit of a misnomer. 'Lie down and think horrifically violent thoughts every time he closed his eyes' was a bit closer to the truth. It certainly hadn't been the most restful of nights, though at least the fever had broken at some point?

A small mercy, given how much everything else hurt. The shaqarava were black now (like his eyes, not that he was aware of that, given that he'd yet to look into a mirror today), the ache traveling up the energy pathways in his arms to his very core. And his back... it felt like someone had taken a knife and twisted it into two very specific spots. All in all, not the greatest morning he'd ever had.

And things were only going to get worse from there!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Who the fuck else would it be?" he snapped. And then those too-black eyes widened in horror. "Sorry," he muttered, seeming to shrink back in to himself. "I- sorry."

Yo, Verity couldn't even snap back, too shocked. She was pretty certain this was the first time that Liam had ever cursed at her.

Also, he had a point.

"Yeah, I'm guessing you haven't looked in a mirror this morning," Verity said, a beat oo late to pass herself off as unmoved. "Or you'd know why I asked. Jesus Christ, Liam, your eyes."

"What's wrong with my eyes?" he asked, blinking rapidly. Nothing felt different about the motion, not the way his hands ached or his back hurt.

"They...They're..." Verity couldn't bring herself to explain. "One sec," she said.

It wasn't far to the closest mirror. They were handy for certain kinds of cryptids. "Here," she said, voice unconsciously gentling as she held it out for him to see. "Look."

As Liam reached out to take the mirror, Verity would be able to see his hands: black marks that were usually a light red, lines of grey spidering out from them like veins running up his arms.

He hissed- actually hissed- as he looked in the mirror.

"What's happening?" he asked plaintively. "I thought I just had the flu or something."

"I...I don't know," Verity said softly. "But no flu I've ever seen does this." She bit her lip. "Can you heal yourself? Maybe?"

Though with those markings, she wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not.

"I don't know," Liam admitted. "I've only managed that once," and he'd been pretty damn desperate then, on the verge of death. Though to be honest, things right now also seemed pretty desperate.

He closed his eyes, reaching inwards for the healing energy that was usually there.

There was nothing. Just a void

Wait, no. Not nothing.

A voice, a whisper, reaching out to him from that void.

"No!" he shouted, clapping his hands over his ears. It didn't help.

"What?" Verity was there, her hands on his wrists. They felt so weird under her hands. "What Liam? Shit!"

She'd almost think this was petrification, but there was no gorgon, no basilisk that could do this. It wasn't stone, it was scales.

"It wants," Liam moaned. Wanted Liam to return to the woods, where he belonged. Wanted him to hurt. Wanted him to cause hurt.

"Don't, don't, don't-" he stuttered out, trying to pull away. "I don't want it to get you too."

"Liam, Liam wait-" Verity said, though he had a point. They didn't know how this spread. Hell, they didn't even know what this was. "What wants?" she asked.

Liam didn't answer, just snarled, showing off a row of teeth that were much, much sharper than they'd been yesterday.

To her credit, Verity didn't flinch. She wanted to though. Not that she hadn't been on the wrong side of a row of teeth before, but again.

Liam.

"Snarl at me again," she heard herself saying with a calm she did not feel, "and I'll thump you in your larynx."

Liam cocked his head at her, the angle something just slightly past natural, and that grimace slowly shifted until it was a cruel parody of Liam's usual smile, one with no warmth to it at all.

"It wants," he said again.

"Who is it and what does it want?" Verity snapped, hands on her hips, legs spread like she was ready to duke it out with whomever 'it' was. "And why should we give a fuck either way?"

That's the thing. Liam wasn't sure if the voice that was whispering to him was something separate, something outside himself, or if it was him, and he was just trying to convince himself it was something other.

"Because it wants to hurt you," Liam ground out. "With more than just words." Human flesh was so fragile. It would be so easy, he found himself thinking. He could make her hurt, the way he was hurting.

Oh hey, and there were those knives she'd grabbed, flashing silver in her hand. "I wouldn't recommend it," she said, voice tight.

"I don't want to."

Except he did.

And he hated himself for it.

"Okay, so we're quickly getting to the point of needing to figure out what to do next," Verity said, looking at him with worried eyes.

Her knife was still up, however.

"You're gray, you're scaley, you've got some kind of horrific sclera infection -" sure, Very, that's absolutely what that was "- and you're not yourself. This isn't some kind of Kimera or Taelon thing?"

"No," Liam shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

If his thoughts weren't so clouded, he might have even been able to pinpoint when this had all started; Monday, with his unplanned swim in Selkie Lake. He'd come home cold, wet, and in an uncharacteristically bad mood. He'd snapped at Verity then too, albeit in a much less literal sense.

The anger made it so damn hard to think, though. He pressed the thumb of one hand into the palm of his other, the habitual gesture made strange by the presence of claws and whatever had happened to his shaqarava.

Verity remembered that, too, but hadn't placed any emotional significance around it. She might, later, once she started noticing the dead foliage around it.

"The clinic then," she suggested. "They probably have a whole slew of weird illnesses on file nobody else has ever heard of."

"No!" A snarl accompanied the word, but hopefully she'd forgive that, seeing as how he didn't lunge towards her as he said it. If anything, he moved back further, pressing himself into the corner of the couch.

"No, no, no," he insisted again, that last repetition accompanied by a plaintive howl of pain as his back hit the couch. Why did that hurt so goddamn much?

"God dammit, Liam!" Verity said, advancing on him, her knife reversing itself in her grip so it wasn't pointing directly at his face. "I don't think this is the kind of thing that just goes away. And you sound like you're in agony...when you don't sound absolutely crazy!"

"I'm not," Liam ground out, "Going. To. The fucking. Clinic."

They'd strap him down and pull him apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left. He knew it. He knew it.

Edited 2019-06-21 18:25 (UTC)

Verity was pretty sure the clinic wasn't going to do that. Honestly, with all the weird things this island had seen, Liam probably made the top...ten?

She also didn't think logic was going to get through to him, though. Not when he sounded like that.

Hell, she didn't think anything could get through to him when he sounded like that.

"Then what do you want to do?" Verity asked. "Liam, you're frightening--the mice."

Yes. The mice. Shut up.

Yeah, Liam as he normally was would never be entirely comfortable in medical spaces, but he recognized that nobody at this clinic in particular, at least, would have done anything like that.

But what was happening now definitely wasn’t normal.

“The Preserve,” he muttered finally. That voice was back, whispering at the edges of his consciousness that that was where he belonged, with the shadows and the other creatures it had claimed.

"The Preserve?" Verity asked, her brows coming together in confusion. She didn't have a handy voice whispering in her ear. "Why the hell would you want to go there?"

“It’s cold,” Liam said. “Cold and dark and it feels like home.” Not that he’d actually been to the Preserve recently. But that was what the whispering was telling him.

Edited 2019-06-22 01:50 (UTC)

Parasites? That were having a weird reaction to Liam's alien DNA?

Honestly Verity wasn't having much luck with the knowing what to do here. Sorry, mice.

"No," she said, trying to take his hands. "Cold and dark, that was last week. This is home, Liam. Warm and dry, me and the mice, it's where you belong."

There was still a part of him left that wanted that to be true, even as he knew it wasn’t.

It was that same part of him that had the sense to pull back as she reached out.

“Don’t,” he hissed again. “Please.” He added, desperation ringing his voice. He’d promised that he wouldn’t hurt her, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore the compulsion to break that promise.

"Liam," Verity said softly, "what can I do?"

Her voice broke on that last word.

He didn’t have an answer for her.

He was too busy doubling over in pain, scream bursting from his lips even as a pair of leathery black wings burst out from his back.

"Jesus!" Verity said, leaping backwards - and, yeah, bringing her knives back up.

Yeah, okay, whatever this sickness was, it wasn't just some kind of bad reaction. She could - sorta? - see her way to accepting that an infection or something had damaged his sclera and that explained the black eyes, but wings? Sprouting wings?

Nope. That was entirely out of bounds here. Shit, if she didn't know better, she'd say he was molting.

"Liam!"

Liam.

Was that his name?

Did he have a name?

Did it matter?

A low, rumbling growl issued from his throat as he eyed her warily.

Yes, actually. It mattered a lot. A whole hell of a lot.

"Liam..." she said, soothing, yes, but with an undercurrent of warning. "You sound like an angry cat. Stop it."

Those brand-new wings unfurled, a warning of his own that she shouldn't come any closer.

Their living room was not meant to hold anything with a wingspan as large as Liam's was. Verity would have filed it under 'good to know,' except for how there was nothing good about this situation.

"Liam," she said, voice still steady. "Talk to me. Use your words. Whatever the fuck this is wants you not to. So fight it."

Words weren't happening. The problem was, he'd been fighting it for the past three days, without even realizing that's what he'd been doing. This was, unfortunately, the breaking point. He'd given in to the cold and the dark and the pain.

Verity wouldn't blame him for it. Couldn't, really. At least, not when she had a chance to think about it, to realize what was going on and for how long.

But that was for later. When she didn't have a predator wearing her boyfriend's body, staring at her like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to flee or to feast.

Her knuckles tightened on her knives.

His gaze shifted over to the window, the way out, and then back to Verity and her knives.

Decision made, he moved unnaturally quickly across the room, claws scrabbling to open a latch that was designed to be operated by human fingers.

"Wait, Liam, no!" Verity said, forgetting common sense in her fear of what could happen to him if he got outside.

...Or maybe fear of what he could happen to.

Wings flared out again and he bared his teeth at her in frustration. Words might have been beyond his understanding right now but he could still recognize tone, and here she was, trying to give him orders. He didn't care for that.

He turned his attention back to the latch, finally managing to get it open. He took a deep breath, the call exponentially louder now that he could smell the blight that infected the island in the air.

With one final, defiant snarl aimed in Verity's direction, he was out the window, letting the shadows guide him to where he was certain he needed to be.

"Liam!" Verity yelled from the window. Into the empty night. "Come back! Please!"

She was answered by silence.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MHA #6, Wednesday Morning

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject