Choke
You choke it but you know
It comes back when you're sleeping
Cuts you in the dark
Hybrid - Choke
There he was once again in a formless, shapeless void, lying face down upon a shard of a ship drifting across an inky black ocean of congealed blood while infinite stars and skulls and their eyeless sockets stared down into him. Luca rolled over and looked back up and frowned, he knew this place. He looked down at the piece of wreckage. It belonged to his own ship. He sighed as the half-prophetic reminder kept gnawing at his being.
As he was roused from sleep within sleep, the ocean began to become turbulent, but an uncanny thing happened, the wreckage he resided on never adhered to the motions of the waves, instead staying uncannily level as it rose and sunk with the water. A black wave washed over Luca and he found that there was a skeleton deposited on his little slice of livelihood. Who was it from though? It was someone he killed some time in his past, but he didn't have time to remember it all. They were obviously doing the wrong thing after all.
It tried to cling to him, but without muscle structure or cartilage, it's kind of ineffectual. Luca brushed the clinging skeleton aside, but more were starting to rise up out of the depths and onto his raft. The sheer numbers of them overwhelmed him and he found himself pinned to the deck by those who were taken by his hand. The ones who he'd killed a little more recently looked fresher, and they were staring eye to eye with him as the stench of decomposing flesh invaded his nose and the sounds of rubbing, rattling bones filled his ears.
But none of those mattered to him. He was content to let their jaws keep rattling and clacking asking for an answer he couldn't provide.
Suddenly a clump of skeletons were pulled away by a gigantic bloody red hand and Luca could see the stars again. And then he looked directly into her eyes. Those two brown eyes, just like her daughter's. He saw a toothy smile and grin as he saw those eyes brighter than the stars coming closer. The skeletons scattered back into the roiling waves and Luca was left alone with the titan, her hand reaching down to crush him.
He catapulted out of bed, breathing heavily and inspecting himself. He was still a Yamataian, he was still alive, he was in his bed on the Crimson Kestrel. He would've breathed a sigh of relief, but she was there standing at the foot of the bed covered head to toe in an ever-regenerating layer of blood. She took a step closer and put one of her knees on the bed. The white sheets started to turn crimson as she bled into them.
He backed up against the wall, trying to pull the sheets closer to him and get distance from her, but he was pulling her closer too. She started crawling across the bed like a sultry temptress, brown eyes standing out from the bloody red face still staring into him as she got closer and closer. He pulled the sheet over his eyes and hoped that she'd just go away and stop haunting him and let him, his crew and his daughter live in peace.
He felt the weight on his legs disappear. He drew the bed sheets down and looked around for her. His chest sunk as he breathed out, but he looked back down and found a head between his legs. Hers. Two arms then shot up and lodged themselves in his ribcage and pulled him beneath the bedding.
-
Then he really woke up, screaming, next to Zeta. The entire ship could hear it, and so could Sargasso.
Zeta immediately sat up in her bed, her eye wide open, scanning around and getting a grab of the situation. It was pretty clear, the shout, the look of Luca, completely covered in sweat and trembling. Zeta quickly shuffled towards him on the bed. She did not hug, since that could've startled him. Instead her fingers simply went and grabbed his, giving him warmth and telling him "I am here."
His hands were shaking as his breathing was deepening. His erratic breath was starting to slow down and rationalise what was happening. he did not grip Zeta back, not until he turned to look at Zeta, into her green eyes. His eyes looked bloodshot and red, he'd been sleeping, but unable to rest. He lurched over the bed and fell onto her with both arms, mewling meekly.
Zeta embraced him without even thought. It was a reflex, something natural as her arms wrapped around him. "Shhhh," she sounded off with her lips. "It is fine, I am here. I am here." She whispered as she cradled him, trying to calm him down.
The door to Luca's room slid open and there were two figures at the door. "Hey, Luca, what happened?" Zeta could recognise it as John's voice. The other figure standing at the door, backlit by the hallway lights was recognisable as Vita. "I could hear it from the bridge." Where he laid his head, even though the ship was still the ground.
"It was a dream I think, he is fine." Zeta said, still holding onto the man tightly. Luca was in a some kind of shock, which told the woman, that whatever he dreamed off, it must have been something really bad. "Let me talk to him," She said to John and Vita.
John nodded back at Zeta and left the doorway. "It's alright," he could be heard saying as he left. "It's under control." Vita, however, remained in the doorway, looking at the two of them even as the door closed. Luca lifted his head off of Zeta's bosom and touched his face. He appeared to pause for thought, and he clapped twice to turn the bedside lights on. There was blood on his face, around his damaged right eye, and on his hand. He whimpered in shock.
Seeing that Luca was starting to get the hang of himself again, Zeta slowly took his head into her palms, she looked down on the blood, looking at what happened. She assumed he burst a vein from the high pressure. Probably right in the eye-socket. Reaching for a paper hankie on a nightstand, she slowly and carefully started wiping the blood of his face.
"Shhhh, it is okay, I am here," She whispered to him, trying to anchor him back in reality. Nightmares could be real bad trouble and she knew it.
"What time is it?" he asked as he pushed the handkerchiefs to his eye, looking at Zeta with his good eye. Still as pristine and deep brown as the day she'd met him.
"Middle of the night," Zeta said without looking at the watches. No reason to, since it did not matter what time it was. "You just focus on me right now."
He sighed and lied back down in bed, looking up at the ceiling for a brief moment to count the panels before looking back at Zeta. "I'm worried. I'm worried about what we've gotten us into," he cracked his knuckles. "Those screams you heard yesterday from the cargo bay. You don't wanna know why."
"We are going to be okay." She simply said as she kept wiping the blood of his face. She was leaned forward above him. She gave him a faint re-assuring smile. "Darling it was just a bad dream. Don't let it set you off."
"I saw Naoko." He said, finally discussing the nightmare that'd rocked him so. "I saw her in Handler's Reach too, when my kidneys started hurting. She almost made me kill myself, said we should be together."
"It is your mind playing trick on you. Some part of you inside want you to blame yourself for all the bad that happened." Zeta said, as she tossed away the handkerchief. Her hand then went and set itself on his chest. She felt his heart beating. "That was not Naoko. That was just a phantom. A ghost from a past that your mind made up."
A phantom that he saw whenever he stared into her daughter's eyes for too long. "You're telling me. She wouldn't want me to die. Not her or Vita." He removed a tissue from his eye and noticed that he was no longer bleeding. It was starting to clot and heal. "I see her when... when I'm hurt, or when the pressure's really on. Just there, watching me until I stop, then she starts moving," he sighed again, the memory of her stabbing again, but hitting a stone heart and starting to blunt. "whispering madness into my head."
Zeta was a not a psychologist, she knew very little about it. She just knew how to be kind and how to be there for Luca. The man was strong, but even the strongest gets to bend their knees, when you pile too much things on their backs. This seemed to be the case. He needed to unload some of it, but Zeta could help him only little with that. She knew who could though, but that woman was back on Yamatai, living in a small house in Ralt.
"We all hear voices and get strange thoughts." Zeta said with sad tone of voice, as she laid down again and pressed her naked body against him. "When I lost my sisters and my arm, my would-be father tossed me out on the streets. There were quite a few times I was about to just give up. It seemed like it was over for me. Alpha went to the army, Beta got mixed into gangstery and I was there clueless and sad. I had no one and I was even losing myself."
Zeta sighed, reliving the old memory. Not the nice kind of memory. "Sooner or later this moment comes to anyone. I had it sooner, but now it is here for you as well. Don't focus on it. Don't listen to that phantom. Focus on Vita, on me and John. On your family and your crew. We are still here and we are with you."
"I think I've had one of those moments too many. Oh well, guess I'll overcome it," he then laid back down in bed, appearing calm now. "just like the others." He chuckled before shimmying closer to Zeta and leaning back into her side. Every now and again, when she could feel his bare skin, she could discover a little more scar tissue. Bullet wounds, knife wounds, all healed up from Yamataian healing factor - mostly.
"It is time Luca," Zeta said suddenly, her voice a bit more serious. "We need to go back to Yamatai. You need to see medical experts, only found in Yam hospitals. We both know it. Also... we need to go to Ralt. It has been too long."
He scratched his chin. "Huh. I was planning to go to Yamatai to shake a few trees and see what came falling out about Handler's Reach. Could get it done there while we're on break." He nodded at her.
"Speaking of which, what time is it, really?"
"No idea," Zeta shrugged, keeping herself against his body. "Does it matter?" He shrugged in reply, mumbling something indistinct in reply before nodding off to sleep. "Thought as much," Zeta grinned, putting her head on his shoulder.
-
THE NEXT MORNING...
Lounge, Crimson Kestrel
"You're up late." John pointed out as Luca walked into the room. He'd taken a moment to wash his face and his hands of dried blood before leaving his room. "Feel better?"
"Maybe. Maybe. I'm calling a meeting. I need to go over what happened yesterday with the interrogation and explain what I found out."
"Right."
MISSION 2 - START!!
"Heh. That just cements it, don't it?" John chuckled nervously as he heard the fanfare that signalled that things were going to get on a roll. Things were definitely going to happen.
"Yep." Luca replied, popping the 'p'. "I didn't even have to use the intercom."
You choke it but you know
It comes back when you're sleeping
Cuts you in the dark
Hybrid - Choke
There he was once again in a formless, shapeless void, lying face down upon a shard of a ship drifting across an inky black ocean of congealed blood while infinite stars and skulls and their eyeless sockets stared down into him. Luca rolled over and looked back up and frowned, he knew this place. He looked down at the piece of wreckage. It belonged to his own ship. He sighed as the half-prophetic reminder kept gnawing at his being.
As he was roused from sleep within sleep, the ocean began to become turbulent, but an uncanny thing happened, the wreckage he resided on never adhered to the motions of the waves, instead staying uncannily level as it rose and sunk with the water. A black wave washed over Luca and he found that there was a skeleton deposited on his little slice of livelihood. Who was it from though? It was someone he killed some time in his past, but he didn't have time to remember it all. They were obviously doing the wrong thing after all.
It tried to cling to him, but without muscle structure or cartilage, it's kind of ineffectual. Luca brushed the clinging skeleton aside, but more were starting to rise up out of the depths and onto his raft. The sheer numbers of them overwhelmed him and he found himself pinned to the deck by those who were taken by his hand. The ones who he'd killed a little more recently looked fresher, and they were staring eye to eye with him as the stench of decomposing flesh invaded his nose and the sounds of rubbing, rattling bones filled his ears.
But none of those mattered to him. He was content to let their jaws keep rattling and clacking asking for an answer he couldn't provide.
Suddenly a clump of skeletons were pulled away by a gigantic bloody red hand and Luca could see the stars again. And then he looked directly into her eyes. Those two brown eyes, just like her daughter's. He saw a toothy smile and grin as he saw those eyes brighter than the stars coming closer. The skeletons scattered back into the roiling waves and Luca was left alone with the titan, her hand reaching down to crush him.
He catapulted out of bed, breathing heavily and inspecting himself. He was still a Yamataian, he was still alive, he was in his bed on the Crimson Kestrel. He would've breathed a sigh of relief, but she was there standing at the foot of the bed covered head to toe in an ever-regenerating layer of blood. She took a step closer and put one of her knees on the bed. The white sheets started to turn crimson as she bled into them.
He backed up against the wall, trying to pull the sheets closer to him and get distance from her, but he was pulling her closer too. She started crawling across the bed like a sultry temptress, brown eyes standing out from the bloody red face still staring into him as she got closer and closer. He pulled the sheet over his eyes and hoped that she'd just go away and stop haunting him and let him, his crew and his daughter live in peace.
He felt the weight on his legs disappear. He drew the bed sheets down and looked around for her. His chest sunk as he breathed out, but he looked back down and found a head between his legs. Hers. Two arms then shot up and lodged themselves in his ribcage and pulled him beneath the bedding.
-
Then he really woke up, screaming, next to Zeta. The entire ship could hear it, and so could Sargasso.
Zeta immediately sat up in her bed, her eye wide open, scanning around and getting a grab of the situation. It was pretty clear, the shout, the look of Luca, completely covered in sweat and trembling. Zeta quickly shuffled towards him on the bed. She did not hug, since that could've startled him. Instead her fingers simply went and grabbed his, giving him warmth and telling him "I am here."
His hands were shaking as his breathing was deepening. His erratic breath was starting to slow down and rationalise what was happening. he did not grip Zeta back, not until he turned to look at Zeta, into her green eyes. His eyes looked bloodshot and red, he'd been sleeping, but unable to rest. He lurched over the bed and fell onto her with both arms, mewling meekly.
Zeta embraced him without even thought. It was a reflex, something natural as her arms wrapped around him. "Shhhh," she sounded off with her lips. "It is fine, I am here. I am here." She whispered as she cradled him, trying to calm him down.
The door to Luca's room slid open and there were two figures at the door. "Hey, Luca, what happened?" Zeta could recognise it as John's voice. The other figure standing at the door, backlit by the hallway lights was recognisable as Vita. "I could hear it from the bridge." Where he laid his head, even though the ship was still the ground.
"It was a dream I think, he is fine." Zeta said, still holding onto the man tightly. Luca was in a some kind of shock, which told the woman, that whatever he dreamed off, it must have been something really bad. "Let me talk to him," She said to John and Vita.
John nodded back at Zeta and left the doorway. "It's alright," he could be heard saying as he left. "It's under control." Vita, however, remained in the doorway, looking at the two of them even as the door closed. Luca lifted his head off of Zeta's bosom and touched his face. He appeared to pause for thought, and he clapped twice to turn the bedside lights on. There was blood on his face, around his damaged right eye, and on his hand. He whimpered in shock.
Seeing that Luca was starting to get the hang of himself again, Zeta slowly took his head into her palms, she looked down on the blood, looking at what happened. She assumed he burst a vein from the high pressure. Probably right in the eye-socket. Reaching for a paper hankie on a nightstand, she slowly and carefully started wiping the blood of his face.
"Shhhh, it is okay, I am here," She whispered to him, trying to anchor him back in reality. Nightmares could be real bad trouble and she knew it.
"What time is it?" he asked as he pushed the handkerchiefs to his eye, looking at Zeta with his good eye. Still as pristine and deep brown as the day she'd met him.
"Middle of the night," Zeta said without looking at the watches. No reason to, since it did not matter what time it was. "You just focus on me right now."
He sighed and lied back down in bed, looking up at the ceiling for a brief moment to count the panels before looking back at Zeta. "I'm worried. I'm worried about what we've gotten us into," he cracked his knuckles. "Those screams you heard yesterday from the cargo bay. You don't wanna know why."
"We are going to be okay." She simply said as she kept wiping the blood of his face. She was leaned forward above him. She gave him a faint re-assuring smile. "Darling it was just a bad dream. Don't let it set you off."
"I saw Naoko." He said, finally discussing the nightmare that'd rocked him so. "I saw her in Handler's Reach too, when my kidneys started hurting. She almost made me kill myself, said we should be together."
"It is your mind playing trick on you. Some part of you inside want you to blame yourself for all the bad that happened." Zeta said, as she tossed away the handkerchief. Her hand then went and set itself on his chest. She felt his heart beating. "That was not Naoko. That was just a phantom. A ghost from a past that your mind made up."
A phantom that he saw whenever he stared into her daughter's eyes for too long. "You're telling me. She wouldn't want me to die. Not her or Vita." He removed a tissue from his eye and noticed that he was no longer bleeding. It was starting to clot and heal. "I see her when... when I'm hurt, or when the pressure's really on. Just there, watching me until I stop, then she starts moving," he sighed again, the memory of her stabbing again, but hitting a stone heart and starting to blunt. "whispering madness into my head."
Zeta was a not a psychologist, she knew very little about it. She just knew how to be kind and how to be there for Luca. The man was strong, but even the strongest gets to bend their knees, when you pile too much things on their backs. This seemed to be the case. He needed to unload some of it, but Zeta could help him only little with that. She knew who could though, but that woman was back on Yamatai, living in a small house in Ralt.
"We all hear voices and get strange thoughts." Zeta said with sad tone of voice, as she laid down again and pressed her naked body against him. "When I lost my sisters and my arm, my would-be father tossed me out on the streets. There were quite a few times I was about to just give up. It seemed like it was over for me. Alpha went to the army, Beta got mixed into gangstery and I was there clueless and sad. I had no one and I was even losing myself."
Zeta sighed, reliving the old memory. Not the nice kind of memory. "Sooner or later this moment comes to anyone. I had it sooner, but now it is here for you as well. Don't focus on it. Don't listen to that phantom. Focus on Vita, on me and John. On your family and your crew. We are still here and we are with you."
"I think I've had one of those moments too many. Oh well, guess I'll overcome it," he then laid back down in bed, appearing calm now. "just like the others." He chuckled before shimmying closer to Zeta and leaning back into her side. Every now and again, when she could feel his bare skin, she could discover a little more scar tissue. Bullet wounds, knife wounds, all healed up from Yamataian healing factor - mostly.
"It is time Luca," Zeta said suddenly, her voice a bit more serious. "We need to go back to Yamatai. You need to see medical experts, only found in Yam hospitals. We both know it. Also... we need to go to Ralt. It has been too long."
He scratched his chin. "Huh. I was planning to go to Yamatai to shake a few trees and see what came falling out about Handler's Reach. Could get it done there while we're on break." He nodded at her.
"Speaking of which, what time is it, really?"
"No idea," Zeta shrugged, keeping herself against his body. "Does it matter?" He shrugged in reply, mumbling something indistinct in reply before nodding off to sleep. "Thought as much," Zeta grinned, putting her head on his shoulder.
-
THE NEXT MORNING...
Lounge, Crimson Kestrel
"You're up late." John pointed out as Luca walked into the room. He'd taken a moment to wash his face and his hands of dried blood before leaving his room. "Feel better?"
"Maybe. Maybe. I'm calling a meeting. I need to go over what happened yesterday with the interrogation and explain what I found out."
"Right."
MISSION 2 - START!!
"Heh. That just cements it, don't it?" John chuckled nervously as he heard the fanfare that signalled that things were going to get on a roll. Things were definitely going to happen.
"Yep." Luca replied, popping the 'p'. "I didn't even have to use the intercom."
