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felix harrowgate

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Who: Felix and you?
Broadcast: none
Action: Starstruck & Iskaulit
When: Monday

In what passes for the early morning hours Felix jolts awake in his room. This time, he is certain it isn't just another nightmare. Just as he is certain that the source of them isn't just his own traitorous mind. He'd been home again. This cold fact isn't much of a comfort to him when the memories of years in other worlds warred with events that to him felt like only minutes ago.

At the time he'd been merely numb, but the shock impels him to move. He gathers his clothes in a rush and goes to the showers, head down and feet hurried. When he gets there, he runs the water as hot as he can stand and lets it run over his body. He stares blankly at his wrists, feeling the ghosts of pain where there should be open welts. The same way the rest of his skin is unblemished by any forming bruises or the lingering impression of hands all over him. There is no soreness. No aches. No stains. Everything his memory tells him he should be feeling - almost still feels - but the reality tells him otherwise.

His magic, too, is still strong. Not that weak, fluttering fragment that they'd made of it. The ritual, as he'd only discovered he'd been the focus of far too late to stop it, had nearly drained the life from him. And would he have, really, if he'd been able? He'd needed the money to help his brother. Hadn't he?

One thing that was the same, however, was that lurking presence at the back of his mind. The one he'd dismissed at first as a figment - some glitch of the augment or remains of his nightmares - was proven to be more than real. The fantôme...the rachenant, as it had named itself...was indeed a spirit he had invited in on the road to Caloxa. And it had followed him here.

Beloved. Thou needst me. Thou hates the one that have chained thee here. I can free thee, it whispered as he tried to scrub away the memories.

The water runs cold before he leaves the shower, probably leaving a surprise for any of his early rising shipmates, but he's not quite in the mood to chat. Instead, he dresses and makes for the shuttles, hair still wet and unbound but not caring so much about appearances.

He takes the shuttle to the Iskaulit and wastes no time in getting to Malum, where he relieves the bar of a few bottles of wine. Crowley would understand. Rather than sitting at the bar, he finds a dark corner to ensconce himself, being not quite in a hurry to explain why he's getting drunk before breakfast.

Funny, he thinks, that weeks ago he was judging others for just this life choice. He made the mistake of believing he'd become inured to anything the fleet could possibly do to him. As it turns out, he was wrong. Just like quite a few things in his life.

(ooc: feel free to run into him at any point. This is the second phase of Felix's canon. Warning for vague allusion to rape and possibly more in tags)

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Crowley is, indeed, in Málum when Felix arrives. He's got things to do...and by 'things' he of course means pouring drinks and generally chatting to anyone who comes by. The actual cleaning and suchlike is what staff are for.

He notices Felix come in and is about to give a quippy greeting as the man walks past to sequester himself into a dark corner- but it falls on his lips. Something is very wrong, and it puts his back up instantly. He moves from the bar to get closer, and feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Something is in him. Something is fucking in him.

By the time he gets to the table Felix is sitting at, he's tenses like a coiled spring. He doesn't know how his has happened but it is absolutely not a good thing.

"What the fucking hell happened to you?" he tries to keep his tone measured, but there's a waver there; maybe fear, maybe anger, probably a bit of both.

While he had half hoped to avoid Crowley entirely, chances being equal the demon was going to be lazing about on his own ship, he hadn't quite expected a direct confrontation. A flippant remark about Felix's burgeoning career as a wino, perhaps, but not that, and not with that tone.

Felix pauses, fingers poised delicately around the neck of a wine bottle, his eyes slightly widened as he tries to decide exactly what, in the panoply of things that had happened to him back in his own world, Crowley could possibly be referring. He's aware he looks something of a mess, but wrinkled clothes and damp hair were not sufficient cause for that kind of response. He knows that Crowley has always had a deeper insight into his true nature than he was necessarily comfortable with, though it's impossible to be certain how specific that knowledge is. His mind spins in panic for a few moments, wondering how much the demon can see.

But if he's asking, he can't know everything. Felix blinks, dropping his gaze.

"Any of number of things, as you well know. You'll have to be more specific," he answered, his tone trying for nonchalant but not quite reaching it. He won't be able to lie about any of it. Not to Crowley. That is the price of their promise. But he can certainly buy himself some time.

Edited 2016-05-25 19:54 (UTC)

Crowley crosses and uncrosses his arms, a snakeskin boot tapping on the floor in an unsteady rhythm . This is wrong and it shouldn't be this way. Was it someone on the Fleet? Atroma calls all sorts and maybe someone decided to hitch a ride.

Felix seems to be in control right now, and that's a small mercy. He doesn't know if that's going to last, though. Worse still, the demon doesn't know how to fix it. This is beyond even his impressive abilities. With all he can do, as a demon he's still pretty low ranking, and this is far beyond his pay grade.

"There's something in you," he hopes bringing attention to it won't make matters worse. "I don't know what it is, but it's something...someone else? Do you know it's there?"

He sounds a little desperate. He's not willing to lose Felix to some crazy fuck hitching a ride. Powerless as he is, he can't stand by and let this happen. He can't. He won't. He'll find some way to fix this.

He realizes rather abruptly that Crowley is worried about him. Is angry for him - and because of his recent jumps in time, this is the second time in so many weeks such a thing has happened. Just as he had with Mildmay, he feels instantly guilty that he'd thought his misery could exist independently of the people he cared about.

He winces a bit, as if the truth were a physical blow, then, hesitantly, nods.

"Yes." There's no point in lying about it. "It...it's called a fantôme. At least as far as my own knowledge of necromancy goes, which isn't far. The ghost of a wizard."

Which is mostly a guess, but one that feels true. It plays by the same rules the fantôme in the tower of Hermione seemed to, and that was enough for him. He can feel it shifting about in the back of his mind, responding to the mention of it, something vaguely self-satisfied in the feeling even if it has nothing to say at the moment.

No independent suffering here, alas. Crowley feels it and as much as he doesn't like it, he's not about to brush Felix aside and let him suffer on his own, either. He'll just have to live with the demon's worry - and likely bitching that he made him worry in the first place at a later date.

"The ghost of a wizard," Crowley echoes back flatly. "Of course. If anyone is going to get the ghost of a bloody wizard possessing him, it's going to be you."

It's said with half fondness-half exasperation. He can sense the thing wriggling around, and he visibly grimaces. It's wrong, and it needs out.

"So. How to we extricate it? Sam Winchester's here. He can do exorcisms."

Felix answers that first part with a flat, sad smile and finally completes the motion he'd started when Crowley approached him - pouring himself a glass. A very full one.

The hideous part of the scenario was that the fantôme felt like less of a problem to Felix than it did to the demon. There's an absurd flood of relief that comes along with the realization that Crowley might be able to sense the spirit, but he can't sense the rest of it. Can't see what those people did to him. It's enough to almost make him want to sob.

He exhales instead. "I have no idea if that would work. And it can't do anything. Not unless I allow it. It cannot hurt anyone."

Anyone else, at least. He knows for sure where all those nightmares he's been having the last week have been coming from. And now that he's aware of it, there's no reason for the fantôme to be subtle.

Edited 2016-05-29 21:54 (UTC)

"Are you sure about that? I mean, if it's possessed you, it can do other things, probably. I should know, I've possessed bodies," he gestures to himself. "I'm possessing a body right now."

He might be sounding a tiny bit hysterical. Largely because he's used to the sort of possession that's in his world. THAT kind of possession where someone can take control for good. Or worse, devour their host whole. None of those are outcomes he wants Felix to go through.

"I'm just-" he runs a hand through his hair, leaving it out of place. "It's a big dice throw to gamble on. If you don't know for absolute certain."

His eyes flicker away at the reminder that Crowley as he knows him isn't really Crowley. It's a fact he often conviently chooses to forgot rather than ponder that detail. He knew he liked the being on the inside, but who knew about the rest of it? He happened to rather like the body Crowley was possessing.

"You're right...I don't know. Especially with Atroma in play to alter the variables," he said, somewhat aggrieved.

It's hard to admit there might to a point, but his mind is largely consumed with everything else that had happened to him. The spirit seemed like the easiest of those problems to face, because it was here. Meanwhile, his time back home had only left him with more questions he could only wait to know the answer to. Such as, if his brother would recover from the illness that he'd been fighting for weeks.

Felix took a long drink from his glass and sighed again.

"Sit down before you fall down, would you please?"

Nothing pretty, that's what. His Truest Form would probably melt about 90% of Felix's working brain cells. It wouldn't be a fun time.

Crowley exhales, even if he doesn't need to, dithering for a moment between pacing and doing what's asked of him, before sitting heavily across from Felix, folding his arms. One of his feet taps on the floor, agitated, unsettled. Nothing about him looks even remotely relaxed - a far cry from his usual laconic state.

"How? I mean just- how?"

He hates the effect this is having on the one person here he cares about above all others. The fact that Crowley is treating him like he might bite, or worse, makes the dread inch itself just a little bit deeper into his chest.

Felix stared at the demon for a long stretch, clearly contemplating that very question, because it opened the door the more than he wasn't keen to discuss. Frowning, he finally replied, "I've been back home. I was.." In exile. But that's the blank Crowley knows now, and the reason for his uncertainty now. It's still not something he's comfortable uttering out loud. The reason is accessory to what happened while he was out there. "Traveling. With my brother. We camped one night outside the burned ruin of an old building. And that night I had nightmares about what had happened there. Soldiers burning it to the ground. This wasn't the first time something like this has happened to me, you know. Not...the haunting. Ghosts. Reaching out to me. Speaking to me. Asking for my help. It wasn't something I invited in the past, but I had learned from the experience. I learned how to see them willingly. I had helped other ghosts in the past, because I knew their traditions, or I was given some guidance as to what ritual would allow them to pass on completely. But I was in a new land with different traditions and the only thing I could think of to do...was to ask."

Felix pauses briefly to swallow more of the wine, the taste drowning the sudden dryness in his throat, and he continued with a somewhat cowed glance back at the demon. "So I tried. I went looking for the spirit and because I am an idiot...I let it in."

"Oh."

Crowley utters that one word as he lets all of that sink in. That Felix had this thing inside him not because of some spell gone wrong, or because someone had forced it on him, but because he wanted to help. That he'd reached out and the spirit had taken that offered help.

He relaxes, a touch, letting out a harsh laugh. He runs his hand through his hair, shaking his head in gentle amusement.

"Of course you bloody did. Sounds just like you, to be honest," he pauses, tilts his head, watching Felix a little. "You feeling okay? I mean, are you dealing with it alright?"

It's yet another instance that he expects anger. Expects to be lectured or yelled at for what he'd done without thinking it through. When the reaction comes out as a laugh, it catches him off guard, blinking with confusion. So when that question comes, it's feels much like someone pushing over an already leaning tower.

The laugh he answers with sounds wounded. "That isn't even...I mean...which part of it? Honestly, the fantôme is merely an annoyance. I can deal with it."

Thy lover pretends to care about thee, but he canst not free thee the spirit crooned jealously, and Felix shifted uncomfortably. He did not precisely fear it, but he did fear what it could do with his powers. There was no restraint, just the memory of hate and anger. But it was bound by rules he could manipulate.

"Why aren't you angry? You were ready to burst into flames a moment ago," he continued, evasive but curious.

Crowley pinches the bridge of his nose, pushing the shades up a little and letting out a long, shuddery exhale. Another laugh escapes him before he pulls it back together. Okay, words. Those are more important now than anything else.

"I was angry. Probably still am a little, but not at you. You were just...being you," he leans back on his seat. "I thought something had just forced its way in without your permission and was actually a threat to you."

He glances at Felix again, or, possibly, through him.

"Still not sure on that one. I don't especially like it, I don't want you getting hurt. Or worse."

Felix pursed his lips and continued watching Crowley through his lashes.

"Worse? Allowing it to gain control of me would be bad, yes, but truly the worse thing would be letting it out only to have it find a new victim. And the power that I have...? It's nothing compared to what other people...people like you...would be capable of." In a sense it felt safer this way. It was something he could manage. And in the end the burden was still his to bear.

He's not sure how he can assure Crowley that he'll be fine when it certainly doesn't look like he is. The usual temptation would be to reach out and comfort with something more than words, but he can't do that right now. Simply cannot. The experience of Bernatha is still fresh on his mind, so that the thought of anyone touching him right now makes some of the calm he's been trying to build since he woke up wither and crumble beneath him.

Edited 2016-06-13 22:43 (UTC)

Boy, had he learned that lesson in Paradisa. The mess that Griffith brought to them all is especially strong in his mind. The wrong person gets turned and twisted into a weapon by something else... nothing good followed that. It would be even worse here. There aren't any safe zones on the Fleet. Not from that kind of thing.

His lips form a thin line. But that's not what's eating at him, it's a concern, yes, but it's not at the forefront of his mind. It's not what's tearing into his chest, vicious and unyielding. Fear isn't something Crowley feels a lot in his existence, when Hell isn't concerned, but he's feeling it now and it's taking a lot of focus not to let that fear turn into panic.

"That doesn't make you any safer. I'm not talking about you going off your nut and attacking people. That can be dealt with," somehow, Crowley isn't violent by nature but by Someone he will protect those he loves with all the viciousness one would expect from a demon. "I'm talking about it turning on you. Doing...I don't know what kind of damage to you."

Harming Felix in a way that Crowley can't heal. He knows people come back here, that like in Paradisa, death is not a permanent fixture. It doesn't mean he wants to see it happen to Felix though. Not at all. Not after everything they've been through. Everything to bring them to the place they are now.

"Like I said. I don't want you getting hurt."

Tyrion appears in the bar some hours later, a weary look on his face as he sidled up to the bar and ordered a glass of wine. He wouldn't have even noticed Felix, if not for that flash of red hair in the darkness. He shifted slightly tilting his head to the side, frowning as his mis-matched eyes flickered into recognition.

He took up his glass of wine, and moved towards the back of the bar, calling out. "Felix?"

Damn. Maybe he could have taken his ill-gotten bottles and crawled into some dusty hole somewhere else on the Iskaulit. There would have been less chances for a witness to his misery, but he was sometimes very very bad at thinking very far ahead.

He considers ignoring Tyrion, but decides that would likely say more about his state of mind than otherwise. Of course, he's rather drunk by the time the man arrives, which says enough in it's own right.

"My lord. We have to stop meeting under these circumstances. You might get the entirely wrong impression about my hobbies," he said, affecting an unconcerned air undercut only slightly by the wobble in his speech.

"Well, my lord ... " He stated slowly, letting his steps become more measured as he came closer. Felix did not look well, at all. Especially with the many bottles that seemed to be before him. "I am not entirely certain which hobby I am looking at right now."

He eyed the bottles, "Wine appreciation." He looked back at Felix, "Looking on being more sexually appealing by improving your brooding demeanor - you are doing quite well, I must say."

He rests his own glass atop Felix's table, tilting his head, "There could also be my personal favorite, avoiding emotional issues by drinking myself into a stupor."

Even drowning in alcohol, he can't help but enjoy the praise, regardless of how it was framed. The fact that he does, even after Bernatha, strikes him funny enough to draw out a short laugh. Powers, he's pathetic.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd suggest you were flirting with me." He grinned, the expression vacant in his eyes, as he slid one of the bottles aside to give Tyrion more room.

"Perhaps it's a little of all those things," he admitted. Which wasn't to say it wasn't more heavily weighted towards the latter.

"Is that what brings you into the bar today?"

Tyrion nodded his thanks, and slipped into the seat that had been vacated for him. One corner of his mouth lifted up, "My dear lord Felix, I think we both know that you are far too much man for me."

He sipped the wine, giving Felix a thoughtful look. "So what you are saying is ... you're having a bit of an interesting week."

A pause, and then a faint snort. "Let us just say that I am trying to figure out the whims of women."

Felix echoes the sentiment with a soft snort of his own.

"On one hand, I can't say I know very much about that particular subject. On the other, I have been accused of gossiping like one, so perhaps I have some insight to offer."

Anything to dance around the subject of why he is here for a little longer.

Tyrion's mouth twisted up at the corners, into a grim little smile. He took another sip of his wine, before he sighed and stated wryly,

"Would you believe me if I told you that the reason that I cannot tell you is because the whims of another woman, who I promised not to tell because of the whims of the first woman?"

He shook his head, "Why do I ever involve myself in these situations? I believe I am just a glutton for female punishment."

"Actually, yes, I would. Women are vicious, and frankly I'm glad I choose to have nothing to do with them in the intimate sense," he answered with dry humor, sipping at his own glass as well. It helps to hide the frown.

"I don't envy the hard place you find yourself stuck in. Though few of us are in very enviable positions to begin with."

"Then you are a wiser man than I - with the appropriate feelings in the right place." He sighed, before he sipped his own wine. Then his eyes narrowed on the other man.

"So, fair is fair, story for story. Why are you here?"

"Still playing that game, are we?" Felix drawled, returning the scrutiny, though his gaze was somewhat hazy.

"Summary for summary, in this case...is that I have been going back home. And...well, things have not gone quite as I expected." His hopes for the future were never all that bright, but they hinged on something that was yet still in the distance. How could he have accounted for everything that would have fallen on him trying to get to even that point?

"I think the game is the only way two practiced liars such as us will in fact, ever speak truth, don't you? At least about how we truly feel." Tyrion's smile was all but bleak, as he sipped his wine.

A frown crossed his face, and then he stated simply, "That was your problem, my friend. Never plan. Plans are the gods way of laughing at us, when they turn them ass over backwards."

"I never much believed in the gods. At least in my own world. Perhaps I should revise that position, as it seems something in the universe wishes me nothing but misery, but I have known for far too long that I walk those paths through my own ill conceived choices," he muttered.

"Besides, I did not really plan anything. No more than any person expects to wake up the next day. We walk with the expectation that the ground will keep being there. But there are always things we cannot anticipate, no matter how little we expect." Like being here, to start off with. The point of the matter was that he hadn't really thought about what getting to Corambis would entail for him and Mildmay. Much in the same way he hadn't quite comprehended the journey to Troia, but his excuse the first time had been madness, and this time his only madness was despair. There were weeks where he might not have cared if he'd died, and he might have nearly surrendered to that if it weren't for his brother saving him yet again.

And that brought him to the rest of the issue. Draining yet more of his wine, he set the glass down and contemplated the contents as he continued,."That's only part of it, to be somewhat truthful. I have been here for years, and to suddenly...feel everything that I was feeling then...only to come back from it like the most vivid of dreams imaginable. The shift is like falling off a cliff."

"Well, if nothing else, the gods do try to teach us humility. For some of us, that's a harder lesson to swallow." He lifted his own glass in a silent salute, smirking up at the ceiling.

Rolling the cup between his short fingers, he narrowed his gaze on Felix. Nodding with understanding, as he tried to understand what precisely was happening with him. He let out a soft 'ah', before nodding his head once.

"There is a girl here, beautiful young woman named Kara. She said it was something like a dream made a memory - you knew it happened but there was little you could do to change it." He tipped his head. "Was it bad enough that you wanted to?"

He's known of several people who have come and back and returned, though none who seemed to have experienced in quite the way he is. Naturally, not even the usual rules would apply to him. Regardless, it's the first time it's been really described for him. Knowing what he does, he finally realizes why people would dance around the particulars. Even if going home merited nothing but good things, the feeling on it's own was sufficiently disorienting as to inspire the need to forget about it as soon as possible.

"Yes," he said, voice cracking slightly, the truth spilling out despite himself. The honesty isn't in the words - as he would have said the same regardless - but in the tone of his throat and the slow swallow that follows.

"But I cannot, can I? Wishing it so is a waste of time."

He shook his head sadly, putting his glass aside as he folded his stubby hands together, looking solemnly over at Felix. "There are so many things in my life that I wish I could go back and change, and yet it will never be so. I will always kill my mother by being born. I will always grow up fearing and hating my father - and he I. I will always lose the one woman who loved me, to the family that despises me. I will lose the brother I respect because of the machinations of the sister I loathe."

He looks down at his hands, "We cannot change our past, undo our scars. What we can do is learn from them. What we can do is forge our way through, one way or another. Life is a road, but it is a winding one. I am not sure if people truly realize that."

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