![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
FOR THEY CANNOT DIE ANYMORE, BECAUSE THEY ARE EQUAL TO ANGELS.
Today, the canals of Mac Anu flow as gentle as they always do, gondolas drifting lazy through the paths of sunlight cut bright across the water. Shops and vendors line the stonework streets along the waterways, a general murmur of NPCs circulating through their preprogrammed business keeping Mac Anu, as always, feeling maybe a little more alive than a real city.
There is one particular bridge that nearly every player's taken at least once, because it connects to a great many other places of interest, and it's wide enough for easy travel. Besides, with the professions update, they've put a fishing spot on the other side of it. NPCs with fishing rods litter the spot in alternating shifts, their laughter mingling with the calls of shopkeeps advertising cheap prices for some simple plants to get started crafting with, and the clink of forks and plates at a restaurant nearby, its customers singing the chef praises.
Below the bridge, a gondolier passes, humming, his gondola drifting along its circuit through the canals, his tune in rhythm with the passing conversation. As he comes out from under it and sails further away, he glances up at the bridge, as if he were expecting something, and he seems to see it. His gaze remains fixed there until, eventually, the water takes him out of sight again.
Today, you might notice that at the base of this bridge, just before your feet, is a red sort of smear.
A little further down the bridge, about a fourth of the way along it, is a person collapsed on the ground. The red trails to him, fallen forward.
You see upon approaching his hand grasping at his throat at the singularly cut sliced deep into his neck. His one good eye wide and unblinking, he is—among all the laughter and conversation on either side of the bridge; in the shadow of the clock tower, which stands a silent witness, the sun at its back—no longer breathing, his body cool to the touch.
Perhaps this could be considered a kindness: for one who failed, time and time and again, to grasp the desire to live, maybe he found some suggestion of it in his last moments, his hand at his throat, his palm smeared with dried blood, a curious anomaly in the deathless Mac Anu. Fragment had, after all, taught him a great many things. Should he not be grateful for one more, no matter how permanent the lesson?
Mithrun is dead.
SATURDAY: AND ON THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN
It's 12:02 PM, and Mithrun is still offline.
You might not really notice it at first, the way his finger starts to twitch. It's just one. A left over, sputtering spark; a reflex maybe come too late. You might not even be around the bridge. It's been a week and his body's just been around. Whatever can be investigated has been. But maybe you are here, by chance. Maybe you do see something in that glaring sunlight, maybe, making it look just like one of his eyes just rolled up.
Through the ambiance, through the murmurs, through the satisfying sound of shoes clicking against stone, and through the laughter, there is a sharp and croaking inhale.
Mithrun's HP ticks up by one.
As some of you may know by now, Mithrun's headset is missing. Even if he were here to play, he couldn't be. And, of course, Mithrun is still offline, if you check. Most of you know he isn't anywhere close to home, besides. Even were his headset still on the hook, he couldn't be playing right now even if he wanted to be— not when he's just gone.
And yet Mithrun's nails dig into the grinding grit of the stonework bridge, all tremors and no strength as he tries to hobble to his knees. He's breathing loud and raucous like he's learning how again, like he just can't keep the air in. He can't help that he's disoriented given how he died; now with only 1 HP to his name, the time about to roll into a lovely 12:03 PM, and still, as it were, offline.
But through will alone he gets up to his feet, unsteady, and stumbles back a few steps. He catches himself on the low stone railing before he goes over into the water (and wouldn't that be a funny thing, to return from death and then drown the moment after?). His gaze unfocused, his eye drifts vaguely upwards to the clock tower, and he seems almost to realize the time, like it's important. His breathing remains loud and haggard.
He goes still in that way players do when their avatar pauses as they navigate the menu to log off. Being already offline, this seems like quite the feat.
The first person to speak up has the briefest window—the shortest breath—to catch his attention before he goes, though he doesn't seem all that there. Everyone else will miss his attention as he proceeds to log out of the game— whatever that means, for him. Feel free to comment in this thread to react, if desired. )
no subject
It's the sound of labored breathing that has Tylor blinking his eyes open first. Sleepy before rising to his feet the moment after. ]
Morgan!
[ He looks way too happy to see him. Until his expression turns the same as it had in the small phone screen after seeing the marks on Hani's neck. At the wounds, the low hp, and the haggard breathing, his gaze flickers over all of him as he's moving closer.
Just as Morgan's already leaving, logging out, Tylor is holding out a potion in one hand and reaching to provide support with the other.
The effort is to no one, for no one, eventually. ]
no subject
And then, as if somewhere in his fugue state the name finally got in after traveling slow through water, he looks up slow; unfocused at first, and then he seems to see Tylor proper, his neck all red, his skin pale as death.
Though his movement's unsteady and weak, he reaches out. He sets his palm against the potion and it disappears like it's gone into his inventory (and in that moment there's the sound of sixteen placeholder fish splashing into the canals below; expelled by some force, apparently, to make space), As the potion goes his hand continues just that much more forward, closing the slight space between them. His hand cool, cold, he takes Tylor's own hand with a gentle touch.
Gnashed up as he is, bruised and scratched up and burned and with a nasty neck-forward cut, his eye turns up to Tylor, and he smiles, slight enough to miss it. )
... Thanks...
( "... T̶̪̾ý̸̘̙̮░̸͉̍̍̚o̸̰̽͋█̸̩͍̩̒▓̵̻͉̇̏̐," he seems to say, but the sounds don't quite make it out right, and the moment doesn't hold. There is his touch; there is his smile and the way he stands just in the shadow of the clock tower, Tylor stood across the threshold in the sun, and then— he's gone.
It's 12:03 PM, and Mithrun is, as he has so far remained, offline. )
no subject
Hey, wait a minute. What the fuck-- ]
Mi--
[ And he's gone. What the hell is this?? Oria shoots a stinkeye at Hien before leaving. ]
no subject
She's there for about 5 minutes when Mithrun's health ticks up and he suddenly flounders to life, staggers to the railing, has a 2 second moment with Tylor, and then... logs out? Or disappears, she can't be sure if he actually logged out.
Um.]
Re: SATURDAY: AND ON THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN
standing there.
Because of crimes he committed,
he Knows that the headset is missing but...
How is this even possible? Bye logging off to check his phone ]
no subject
In a way she feels a bit like she failed the guy, keeping her mouth largely shut when they spoke - the single time they spoke before his untimely death. Like maybe she's the one at fault, if you think about it.
...
And then he staggers to his feet and logs off, what.]
Holy crap!
no subject
fast to embrace love, but too slow to take the steps necessary to reach him. like with ganymede, hani misses mithrun by seconds, hand reaching out to catch a specter when their legs haven't even started running yet.
it turns out that running to mithrun won't do anything as his avatar disappears, dissipates like they feared it would. then there's nothing inside or out. ]
...
[ slowly, they retract their hand and stand there. minutes pass, the silence so loud in their mind. their chaotic feelings reflecting upon itself like a kaleidoscope until they can't even tell what's what and how they feel. but something - something is wet and welling.
before the first tear can fall, they log out to another place where he's not. tabibito is offline. ]