ataraxion | 009. text. username: MAGNETO

[ Plans, arrangements, meeting places.

Thirty minutes later she’s trudging back through the jungle with a shipwrecked mutant in tow. He’s slick with sweat and doesn’t talk much, gingery whiskers dripping when he freezes to listen, one eye cottoned over blind and the other bitterly sharp.

The sun is high in its arc and most animal life is quiet in the shade, hunkered down, waiting for night.

After a moment, he shifts the pack on his shoulders and continues on without explanation. ]

( so roughly that awkward, then.

benevenuta - who introduced herself briefly as svenja, accent and terseness germanic, temperament apparently serene - accompanies him with shorter strides at a quicker clip to keep apace.

there's a moment where she considers asking, but -

he carries on, so she does, as well. this is probably not a serial killer set up.

the tree she's selected is a decent choice, strong trunk and branches, elevated, unsuitable for someone less athletic in a way that's probably deliberate. she stops at the bottom of it, shrugging her own backpack down off one shoulder as she scrutinises it and the pile she'd amassed in the meantime. )

[ Erik might’ve been a better fit for the serial killer mold before he lost half of his sight and a snip of his ear. Animal fangs have torn long tracks through the meat of his forearm; old scars pucker and pinch around excavated tissue that never grew back. The successful serial killer is charming, disarming, or at least unassuming.

He looks like trouble.

The tree she’s chosen is decent enough to pass a cursory inspection from below -- he sweeps a glance around the surrounding jungle before he leans to shrug out of his pack. ]

I’ll need to clear some of the surrounding forest for materials, [ he tells her, after a beat. Still catching his breath. ]

Unless you’d like to do the honors. [ The look he gives her in aside is not especially optimistic. She doesn’t look like much of a lumberjack. ]

( in comparison to trouble, she looks more like a serial killer.

mild-mannered and pleasant, quiet where he doesn't seem interested in conversation, soft hands, no visible scars (except what looks like it might be a brand, only partially visible on the back of her hip where the waistband of her leggings - purple, activewear, probably used to look great in the gym before survivalist jungle times - sits). she'd not quite jogged alongside him, but didn't tire; doesn't have any breath lost to catch when they stop.

her answering look is bland. maybe a little wry, caught in the right light. )

As entertaining as it would be, I think I leave that to you.

What can I do to help?

Keep out of the way, [ isn’t deliberately condescending. There’s a crinkle at his brow that could pass for apologetic, once he’s had a moment with the way it sounds. He stoops to haul a pair of thick chains from the heap of his pack, and a bar of steel. ]

Watch for wildlife. [ Things that might try to kill him while he’s cutting down trees, he means. ]

You’ve seen the network. [ this post in particular. He waits to measure her reaction before he moves off, intent more than he is openly wary. They don’t know each other. ]

( the crossbow that came with her breaks down into parts, folds away - not too fiddly to assemble on the fly, but more convenient to carry around in, for instance, a leather backpack intended for someone who bought proenza schouler for quality but not necessarily utility.

out of his way, with her back to a large tree, having glanced up once before setting to her task, she is set about efficiently putting it back together as he speaks. not finished when he is, because there's more crossbow than erik is chatty; she doesn't look up from it to say, )

I will keep wildlife out of your way also, if necessary. Yes, I see.

[ A crossbow as her weapon of choice earns a late, lingering glance, some question gone unasked in the dappled light. Then he’s off, shoulders shifting through the leaves.

Chewing through alien jungle is noisy work. Trunks split and trees fall, cracking through the limbs of their neighbors. Occasionally an animal will call out into the afternoon humidity -- a harsh, rattling croak -- and the bite of his saw stops. The snapping of fresh timber stops. Yellow beetles buzz around the undergrowth, undeterred.

Wash, rinse, repeat. At the hottest part of the day, even the beetles are withdrawn, legs hunkered still under their shells in the shadows of broad leaves.

Despite metal doing most of the work, Erik isn’t in a state to tune in when he breaks to survey the wood he’s stripped down so far. It’s oppressively hot. He’s pale when he wanders back to fish for water in his pack, and quiet, still some kind of wary about her bow. She didn’t walk him out here to talk. ]

( her tension is -

not quite tension. calm alertness; less wary of erik than he is of her crossbow, watchful but not anxious when she gazes through the treeline, a small statue for how easily she could stay precisely where she is for as long as is needful. sweat beads and tacks her hair to her forehead, her neck; it isn't that she doesn't feel discomfort so much as you can get used to a lot of things, given enough time.

you can get good at a lot of things, too -

when the bolt fires past erik (a solid metre over his head, confidently shot) it slams home into the forehead of something that isn't supposed to look the way it does, falling from the treebranch it had been preparing to leap from and hitting the jungle floor beneath. it's hard to tell, at this distance, whether the crack was a bone or the bolt. )

[ Erik jolts in place, muscle locked down stiff over bone at the hiss and crack of the bolt over his head. The beast drops.

When he looks back to her from the twitching corpse, the look in his eye is somewhere halfway between gratitude and a solid middle finger, steel cable tension still pent up beneath short breaths and the edges carved in hard around his face.

He takes a long swig of water, and then another, watching her all the while, until he’s had his fill and cast the canteen back down into his pack.

Three more of the abominations are on them before the canteen hits bottom, rasping, rattling, all hooked talons and plucked feathers. The knife on Erik’s belt has stapled one to a tree and returned to his hand in the time it takes him to square on the other two dropping through the branches, sweat stinging his eyes, burning behind his sinuses.

He hasn’t been alive quite as long as she has. ]

( you don't stay alive as long as she has by being slow - benevenuta is off her knees and reloading the crossbow in a smooth movement that would be properly impressive and cinematic if cyclops over there weren't understandably preoccupied with not catching space rabies. (which is the coolest anyone dubbed cyclops while x-related has ever been, or ever will be.)

on the other hand

there are upsides to his understandable preoccupation

such as: he is at least unlikely to get that first, most undignified glimpse of the moment where, lining up her shot for two or three, number four has made it down the tree she was previously under to sink blood-crusted claw into her skin. he probably doesn't miss the noise she makes, or the noise it makes when she reverses the crossbow and uses it as a blunt instrument, talons that had pulled tight taking flesh and blood with them as she levers herself elbow room.

one of the problems with living as long as she has - with living through so much, with learning a pain tolerance beyond that of a person for whom infection and amputation and long months of recovery are a precarious reality - is that tendency to become cavalier with her own safety. erik might die, so she should protect erik, and,

look, it fucking hurts, there's no getting around that, but she fires past him. it's not as good a shot as the first one; it hits, only slow and bleeding isn't dead. )

[ It’s always wild animals -- beasts and demons. Never gunmen or robots or even missiles.

Talons hook in and Erik whips around with an awareness that borders on preternatural, flinching, twisting -- shoulders back, teeth bared -- to see the fourth. Fifth. A back-handed sling of his knife sees it cracking through the sternum of the creature on Benevenuta with far greater precision than it was thrown. It pops, twists, and snaps in full reverse, over Erik’s shoulder and down into one that’s still alive.

And so on, with bolts and blades until they’re all dead.

Erik is unscathed, outside of still looking peaky, unsteady on his feet -- the blood misted and spattered at his hands doesn’t belong to him. His knife drips into the leaf litter beside his boot. ]

How deep?

( if she had to go lost in space with some of her belongings, why not her trunk? all manner of useful things. boots, guns, sweaters; one of those would be useful right about now, only her fingers splayed on her side between erik and the fact that what fucking hurts is an injury like that in reverse, flesh dutifully knitting itself back together. it's tough to hide what will soon be the entire absence of an injury between a sports bra and the kind of pants that start hashtags.

some of the blood isn't hers, which is - very unpleasant. but the majority of it absolutely is, and the way she leans heavy on one knee, bracing herself, is not false. )

It looks worse. It's fine.

( lying about it is second nature. her heart could've stopped beating for a solid ten minutes and her instinct would be to assert she suffers narcolepsy and back it up with a good imitation of narcolepsy's actual symptoms. )

[ Erik’s forehead crinkles, disbelief bunched in dense between his brows. To argue he’d have to acknowledge that he felt the claws piercing in, hooking under the skin into muscle --

He looks to her side to check for empirical evidence to the contrary there, only to look back up to her face a slow beat later. Realization sets in flat behind his good eye, doubt bled out into something warier. Made.

There’s a decisive moment where his knife drips and he doesn’t say anything. ]

We should get back to camp.

[ He breaks his own silence. ]

They may be under attack.

( she neither avoids his gaze nor acknowledges what she finds there, reluctant to drop her hand from her side when she hefts the crossbow with the one free and drags herself to her feet. it will stop hurting.

soon, probably; the initial blaze of white-hot agony has already lessened to periodic spikes, familiar. she's had worse than this. )

Yes.

( when she does let go, her fingers still slick with blood, the wound isn't gone - but it's less than it was, her body methodically repairing itself ('back to factory settings', a modern joke at her expense that she hadn't been supposed to find funny or repeat later). by the time they get back to the camp, the skin under her blood will be smooth and unmarked, just like every part of her except that brand on the back of her hip. )

I will see if my bolts are salvageable.

009. text. username: MAGNETO

NO ya ok

finger guns

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