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Not What it Seems

Started by miss_sanguine, December 15, 2011, 09:05:08 PM

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miss_sanguine

From his spot on the bed, eyes gazing up at the ceiling, he heard the door open. A soft sound, almost inaudible over the buzzing he heard. Good. Someone had heard him.

Then a loud, over-cheery screech crashed through the peaceful quiet. His ears rang from the disturbance. He cried out as his head nearly split in two.

That voice, as recognizable as it was agonizing, almost killed him. Or so it felt. No wonder the room had been left hushed—all of a sudden he felt like he was having the worst hangover of his life. "Stop yelling, would you?" he groaned, moving his hand to his head, which expounded far more energy than it should have. He was going to throw up if this guy wasn't careful.

But then water was mentioned and he realized how dry his mouth felt. His tongue lay in a waterless desert, the roof of his mouth made of sand. There was nothing more in the world that he wanted than water.

"Thirsty?" he said, laughing even though it hurt to do so. "I'm desiccated. Get me a drink, would you? And would you mind telling me how the heck I got here? Or even where the heck I am?"

Juno

Hearing his voice again was enough to calm him down, or at least enough so he wasn't speaking so loudly in his excitement to see the guy conscious for once. Something he'd said seemed to catch his attention, though, which Julian waited eagerly for. He just grinned that goofy grin at the request, crossing the room.

As he poured water from the full pitcher, he looked over his shoulder as he listened to the rest of Kabe's questions, which left him sloshing water onto his hand. Wincing, he looked back down to his task until he'd gotten the glass full. Bringing it back over to him, holding it out, he shrugged with his unburdened shoulder.

"Well, the police brought you, ya know. I was going to bring someone out to you." He huffed a bit for this, as if he were disappointed he hadn't been the hero. "But they found you out there, I guess, and had enough brains to know you were injured. We're in Moonspear. In a doctor's home. He's nice, by the way. Good man. Friendly. Gracious." He paused, looking down at him.

"Do you remember anything that happened?" he asked cautiously before his brow furrowed at a particular memory. "And who are you?"

miss_sanguine

Grabbing the cup, he downed the water in three giant gulps, some of it spilling down his chin and onto his bare skin. More. He needed more. Thirst gnawed at him, wrenching his stomach into a twisted fruit. He held the cup out sharply, though listened as his new friend spoke.

The police? Damn. They'd caught up to him after all. At least they were kind enough to let him heal before hauling his framed butt off to jail.

He laughed at the irony, arm coming back to his side. What would his parents say, knowing he'd be in jail again? And this time for a longer time than what was given to one for simply stealing.

"Most of it," he said, staring up at the ceiling with a smile. "Not much after the whole fight fiasco." He'd killed the guy; he remembered that. Wasn't too often he shed someone's life blood. "And how rude of me," he added, "for not introducing myself as I bled to death. I'm Kabeyage."

He glanced around, eyes landing back on the shifter. "So, Cat Man," he said. "What made you stick around? Your face seems to be healing nicely."

Juno

Rolling his eyes for Kabe's outstretched hand, Julian took the cup again to refill it for him. As he returned with it and held it out again for him, he felt a fake smile twitching to his lips. "Fight... Uh-huh. Yeah, you sure did fight so much." Please, you were just laying there while I got all scratched up! Hmph! And then wandered off while a lion finished him off!

As he listened to the man, though, this Kabeyage as he now knew, his face slowly twisted to an angry frown. "For your information I got this trying to rescue you!" he said shortly, pointing in an irritated fashion at the stitching along his cheek. "And don't call be 'Cat Man!'' he added, almost whining. "I have a name, you know! Julian..."

Ruffling his own hair and then smoothing it out again, the shifter's face looked quite the part of an unsung hero. "Well, Kabeyage, I wanted to make sure you actually bothered to wake up again, and, uh, there was a lion before... But it disappeared! I thought it'd eaten you, uh, until you came back... Did you see it?"

miss_sanguine

Again the water sped down his throat like a waterfall, nothing left mere seconds after the cup touched his lips. The final gulp satiated him, the cup now dropped to the floor.

His companions words confused him. He sounded bitter, sarcastic. What did he mean by it? Of course he'd fought, and well, too! For one on the verge of death, he thought he'd done even better than well. He was a damned warrior!

Kabeyage the Warrior. He liked the sound of it. He grinned.

"And what a fine battle scar it is!" he said enthusiastically, eyes closed as he smiled wide. "I thank you kindly--Julian, was it? Feh." He scrunched his face up. "I like Cat Man, myself. Catchy, cool. I bedded a girl named Julian once, and I'd rather not look to you as a woman. Though," he added, opening his eyes and staring out into space at the fine memory. "She had a lovely set of breasts."

He turned to Julian as the man finished speaking. "Very kind of you, checking up on me like that. A true friend." Then he stared. Could the man be serious? "A . . . lion?" A mischievous smile suddenly lit his face. "Can't say that I saw one, no. You sure you weren't low on blood as well?"

Juno

"Then don't look to me as a woman," he growled under his breath, huffy now at the ding to his pride. Such a silly nickname over his own, given name? Ridiculous! Now the man was saying he hadn't even seen the lion, though! How could that be? He was there, he was gone, and then back again. How had he not seen a large, odd-looking lion in the middle of nowhere in a forest!?

Lips twitching, unsure if he should scowl or smile for what he said, Julian ended up shoving his hands in his pockets and looking down at the floor. Maybe he had been mistaken. Maybe there wasn't a lion. No! You bumped into it! You felt it, you know it was there!

"I wasn't the one bleeding half to death... I'm sure I saw it, though." His voice wasn't all that confident, though. "Are you...sure?" he asked, looking up to the man again. "I mean, it was huge! And it was so...light. Almost white, but not really. I'd never seen anything like it before, I was hoping..." Rubbing at his neck, Julian turned to pace the length of the bed for a short while, unsure of what to say about it now. Surely this man thought he was crazy. "Do you at least remember the jaguar?"

miss_sanguine

This was proving to be too much fun. Kabe had determined back in the woods that Cat Man wasn't very bright, and this only proved it further. How could he not have made the connection? The clues were all there!

And Kabe wasn't lying, either. He hadn't seen a lion, seeing as how he'd been the lion.

"I'm quite sure," he said matter-of-factly with a nod. "And of course I saw the jaguar," he said, a little more bitterly. "You stepped on me as the jaguar. How could I forget that?"

He reached up and tugged at his light-colored locks of hair. They were greasy from lack of wash. "Did the lion happen to have coloring similar to this?"

Juno

Smirking, glad he'd remembered him, never mind why exactly, Julian stopped his pacing as the man gestured to his hair. His hair? A color like that? Leaning closer, peering at him suspiciously for a moment, he nodded slowly. "Just...like that. Exactly like that, actually." How odd. What a coincidence this was turning out to be!

"Are you sure you don't know anything about this?" he asked, bright eyes flickering to look at Kabe's own blue ones. Somehow, they also seemed familiar.

miss_sanguine

He thought Julian might actually have caught on until the man asked his next question. Dropping the strands of hair, he stared at him, smile faltering, but only a little.

"Nothing at all," he said. How could man, a man who was a shifter himself, not recognize the obvious hints of a fellow shifter? "But how could I, if you say I left for a small moment? Perhaps the lion left before I came back."

Tiredness pulled at his eyelids, wanting to pull him back into sleep. According to Cat Man, he'd already slept for quite some time, but he felt like he'd only been out for a few hours. He blinked, trying to fend it off.

"When are they taking me to prison?" he asked, voice slurring a little.

Juno

Frowning, Julian wasn't quite sure what to think of all of this now. He must be hiding something! That must be it! Hiding...but what? Indeed, he wasn't the brightest, but the shifter had good intentions.

Staring for a moment more before he straightened up again, Julian walked back around the bed to sit himself in the chair on the other side of it. That was when he heard Kabe speak of prison. "Prison?" he perked up. "Are you needing to go to prison for some reason?" Well this was highly suspicious, indeed! He was definitely curious about this.

miss_sanguine

The insistent buzzing, like thousands of little bumblebees beating about the room, droned on, its sound swelling until it filled the whole space around him. Julian had made no motion toward making it stop, nor did he give any hint of hearing it. A normal noise heard in a doctor's house? He wouldn't know. All he knew was that it made him sleepy, his eyes drooping. He could barely keep hold of his consciousness.

"Yes, yes. Prison, Cat Man," he managed, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth as he tried to maintain his speech. "The night patrol thinks I've killed someone, and you said they'd caught me. Usually when a man is thought to have killed someone, he goes to prison--and what is that atrocious buzzing?"

Now he couldn't open his eyes. He was falling into an open void, the buzzing all he could hear. Try as he might, he couldn't open his mouth, the effort too strenuous. All he could manage was a low humming sound.

Then he was out.

Juno

"'Cat Man' is not my name, goddammit! It's Julian! Julian!" he grumbled, crossing his arms and turning away as he listened to the rest of the explanation. Thinks he killed someone? Ah, so he really was the one they were looking for...but why didn't they say anything about it when they dropped him off? They just said they'd found him out there and...that other guy, too.

This was mighty puzzling. And what was this about a buzzing? Lifting his head a bit, he tried to listen, but he couldn't hear a thing that might be taken for buzzing. Turning back, opening his mouth to tell Kabe about what the police had said when they'd brought him in, he only saw that his eyes were closed. Stopping himself, he eyed him suspiciously for a few moments. "No, you aren't sleeping again, are you?!" Standing, he leaned over him, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. "Oh, for goodness sake! So lazy! How can you be that tired, you just slept for days! Literally!" It was no use, though, this wasn't going to get him anywhere.

Suddenly, though, an idea began to form.

He thinks he's going to prison? Fine. Quickly slipping from the room, he went to employ the doctor's help in his plan. He realized, though, that the man probably wouldn't be too keen for having his rooms rearranged and returned almost immediately. He would leave this one a mystery for him.

Taking out the doctor's equipment, armful by armful, Julian quickly emptied the room of all things it should have properly held save for the bed Kabeyage was on. Dragging furniture, he left it all strewn about the kitchen with no intentions of moving it anytime soon. So childish.

After rifling through drawers and finding none of what he needed, Julian slipped out to the markets. When he returned some time later, though, his arms were ladened with heavy rolls of the darkest fabrics he'd found and, his prize, a weighty two-way shackle. Ah, he was a child.

Sneaking back to the room, Julian stuffed the key in his pocket and snapped each cuff to Kabe's wrists. Shaking his head and giving a short snort, he made quick work of covering up the window near the corner to darken the room and then, with difficulty, drape the rest of the stuff along the walls to make it practically pitch black. Returning to the bed, he snatched up the blankets covering the sleeping man before exiting the room. He locked the door behind him.

Setting down his bundle with the rest of the room's things in the kitchen, he finally allowed himself a chuckle. He would wait. See if this holds his attention.

miss_sanguine

Several hours later he came back to consciousness. Or he thought he lay awake. Hard to tell. When he opened his eyes, it was to darkness, as if the clean white room he'd been in earlier--how long ago had that been? Minutes? Days?--had turned into a dark cave. It still smelled clean; the air sterile, never having met the outdoors, but everything else was different.

Where was he?

Upon trying to move his hands to pull some of his dirty hair out of his face, Kabe found that something hindered them. Something heavy, bulky, only allowing him to lift his arms a few inches from his body. It clanked with the effort as it moved.

Chains. His hands were shackled.

"Ah." Smiling, he blew what strands of hair of he could away from his eyes. Confusion bubbled up inside of him, laced with mild amusement. Movement of his legs, painful as it the action was, let him know that his legs were free. Only his hands confined.

If this was a prison, it was a nice one--and a stupid one. Comfy beds, no cellmates, stupid officers leaving him capable of escape.

Or they know I'm too weak to try and escape, he thought.

Damn, but it was cold. Nice beds, yes. Warm blankets to go with the nice beds, no. Cold, sterilized air bit at his bare skin, stinging the area around his stitches.

What was he supposed to do now? Go back to sleep?

Juno

Staying in the kitchen wasn't an option for long. Julian was fidgety with his giddy stupidity. It was only a matter of time before he crept back down the hall and hunkered over to listen for any sound from within.

Starting a bit for the sound of clanking chain, he found he was hard-pressed to not give himself away as he listened for more. But then...there was hardly any more. Frowning, the excitement of his fun lost, the man straightened a bit. What?! He isn't scared? He's not freaking out? Ugh...so much for that.

"DOOR! ...NOW!" he barked, trying to make his voice gruffer than it actually was and slamming a boot into the bottom of it for emphasis.

miss_sanguine

Kabe had just decided that sleep was the better option compared to staring at the dark ceiling when he heard someone outside the door to the room. Whoever it was, they decided to scare the soul out of him by kicking at the door as loud as they could and screaming. Not only did he feel like he'd jumped three feet in the air at the sound, the pounding kindly reminded him of the migraine he still had.

Since when did prison guards pound on doors like this? And he had no idea what the man wanted.

"Oi! Screaming at the door and kicking it won't make it open. It doesn't have ears. Why not try unlocking it and then turning the handle?" he shouted wryly, hand grabbing his forehead as it throbbed. "And keep it down! Injured man trying to recover, here!"

Was the town so low on funding that they hired idiots that didn't even know how to open doors and instead shouted at them, as if that would make them open?

Juno

Dropping his head against the door, Julian just stood there for a moment with wide eyes. Does he seriously think I'm that stupid? I am not yelling at the door! It's him! Stupid man, I should- INJURED?! You think they would care if you need to recover?! Ugh...this isn't turning out at all how I wanted. Huffing and rolling his eyes, he leaned back and gave the door another swift kick to rattle it in its frame.

"Injured or not, get over here! Laying in bed for days, YOU'RE SO LAZY!" he shouted, voice faltering when he heard a door open somewhere else in the house. Well, shit... I thought nobody was home.

miss_sanguine

Kabe moaned as his head continued to throb, pressing on his temple with the palm of his hand in the hopes that it might make it ebb--not an easy task with shackled hands. Where was that kindly black oblivion he'd fallen into earlier? It had been so nice there, no pain, no worries, no . . . anything.

And then the damned idiot guard had the nerve to call him lazy. As if he hadn't bled out nearly all of his life however many days ago it had been.

Something about the guard's voice sounded familiar, though, especially when it seemed to die off at the end, as if interrupted by something.

Even if he wanted to stand, he didn't think he could. As he sat up in his bed, it felt like the whole room spun around him, and he had to place both palms on his forehead in an attempt to make it stop. He felt another wave of nausea stirring deep in his stomach.

He wants me to get up, fine. I'll just throw up all over him, he thought with grim satisfaction.

"What the hell's going on in here?" he heard another man from beyond the door say.

A very good question.

Juno

The doctor had come down to find his precious instruments carelessly piled up throughout the kitchen. It equated to practically two-thirds of his equipment and he was livid, to say the least. Following the racket from down the hall, he'd found one of the two men he'd attended to banging on the door of his treatment room. "The gall!" he continued, arms crossed as he watched Julian back himself away with flailing arms. "I let you boys stay and this is what you give me?! Did you think you'd sneak out before I noticed you messed everything up?!"

"N-no! I didn't mess it up!" he whined, wincing as the man became increasingly red-faced.

"Oh, you didn't, huh? What's in there? Why'd you go and take everything out! Why is everything in my wife's kitchen, hm?!"

"....shit!" he hissed, wincing as he felt his back hit the wall. Julian had no answer he thought the doctor might believe, even the truth. With wide-eyed horror, he watched as the doctor moved away and flung the door open. Lurching forward, he grabbed frantically for it even though it was already swinging into the room. "N-no! You're ruining it!" he whined, though he only received a sharp glare for it.

miss_sanguine

Angry voices, then a blinding light. Kabe shielded his eyes from it with his arms as the door swung open. A man stood shadowed in the doorway, the one that had been doing the shouting.

A doctor. As unfocused as his eyes were in the sudden light, he knew a doctor when he saw one. And this was an angry doctor, though the man's eyes turned to concern when he saw Kabe sitting there—concern that quickly turned to fury.

"What in all the hells did you do?" the man demanded. At first Kabe thought he was talking to him, until he realized someone else stood just outside the door.

Someone he immediately recognized, and everything made sense.  Sort of.

The doctor rounded on Julian, face purpling. "What—why—do you realize--?" he was spluttering, though his anger made it difficult for words to form.

"Excuse me," Kabe interrupted, "but would someone mind telling me why I'm shackled in a doctor's office? And," he added as an afterthought, as his head began to swim again and his vision became unfocused, "could you possibly catch me, seeing as I'm about to—"

He'd leaned too far forward on the bed. Before he knew it, he was on the floor, slightly bemused, the momentary blackness that had fogged his eyes fading. Then came the pain and he swore under his breath, curling up in a tight ball. Never mind that he'd smacked his head on the hard ground. His side felt like it'd split in two! Again.

"Oh, Kia. Someone just knock me out," he said, hands tightening into fists. He didn't even bother getting up off the floor. That involved effort, and he didn't have it in him. Plus, of course, he was shackled. "Or kill Cat Man. I'd accept that as an alternative."

Juno

The light bursting in through the doorway illuminated parts of his patchwork prison, and Julian wasn't liking it at all. He was caught between the terrible feeling of his plan crumbling in his hands, being tongue-tied for the obviously angry, spluttering doctor before him, and a mild feeling of regret for shackling Kabe, who seemed wide awake now. With a sheepish little smile he looked between the two, his brain stuck now as he clammed up. He figured there wasn't any way now for him to escape this situation unscathed.

Everything seemed to happen too quickly for him to react: Kabe falling with a loud thunk, seeing him curl up, the doctor looking first concerned and then turning with eyes glowing of murderous intent. All he could do was scramble over to his friend to kneel beside him, far too late to save him from whatever new pain he was in. "Don't kill me, I haven't done anything wrong!" he hissed, fumbling in his pocket for the key. When the doctor saw the flash of metal in his hand, though, he stormed across to snatch the drapes from the window to bring a bit more light into the room, and it was only then that he realized that everything had truly been covered.

"You idiot!" he muttered.

"I didn't do anything!" Finally finding the key, he quickly unlocked Kabe's bonds before peaking over the bed with a rather helpless look in his eyes. "I didn't damage anything! It's all out there! And," he turned to look back down to whisper like the doctor might not hear him at such proximity, "are you okay?"

"Did you even stop to think what you might be handling?! It's all been touched by your grubby little hands and who knows what you might have broken, Kia forbid!"

"Kabe," he whined, shrinking down beside him now. "Help me! I'm sorry!!!"