faderift | [CLOSED-ish] Not what teacher said to do

[Catch all. I'll add prompts for difference stages of the experiment as I feel inclined.

Reply directly to this toplevel if you have a wildcard for a stage I don't have a toplevel set up for yet.]

Edited 2023-10-08 22:39 (UTC)

i. trials and tribulations
It has been just a moment since the contents of the lyrium flask was drunk down, and now the point of Wysteria's attention on her present subject has become very fixed.

Sat there on a stool just a foot or two removed, she has a sheaf of papers pinned to a slate across her knee. Her pen, retrieved from somewhere behind her ear is poised so that at any moment she might begin taking yet more notes.

"Tell me if you begin to feel differently," she prompts after a moment.

ii. after hours
It's late, and presumably most of the less obsessive denizens of the Gallows have set down their work for the day in favor of a few hours of leisure or at the very least a hot meal before the Gallows kitchen staff turns in. For the weather is beginning to alter, and here at last is the ideal hour to begin craving a warm drink or a cup of soup.

Wysteria de Foncé, however, apparently has forgotten the adage of One cannot subsist on dangerous narcotics and its associated paperwork alone. Hence why she can be found in the old Felandaris office at even this hour, bent over the week's worth of paperwork and in the process of doing some industrious re-writing and re-organizing.

Her little white dog, a semi-constant companion even in this outlandish venture, has finally deigned to lay himself on the floor. However, his crossed front paws come uncrossed and his head rises when someone appears in the office's open doorway.

iii. wildcard
[hmu by disco/pm/plurk if you want something bespoke, otherwise happy to roll with whatever you throw my direction.]

Edited 2023-10-08 22:48 (UTC)

“Uh huh,” Jayce says absently, half-distracted by the effort of consciously monitoring for changes in his own body — and the low-grade buzz of anxiety that comes with knowingly ingesting a dangerous substance, natch. His gaze sweeps across the room in a gradual, but repetitive arc, slipping above Wysteria’s head as a simple matter of height difference. If his eyes happen to land on Viktor somewhere in their general vicinity, then he merely stares a beat longer before continuing elsewhere.

Unconsciously, his left leg begins to bounce restlessly. “Have you worked with the griffons any?” he asks, purely to avoid the entirety of Wysteria’s focus— or attempt to, anyway. As she speaks, perhaps his left palm, wherein the anchor shard resides, itches and sparks when he makes a fist in response.

This is not her first interrogation. While she answers, the pen in her hand jots a note.

"Not particularly, no. I gather that the animals are of considerable interest to native Thedosians, but I can't say that I've ever felt the urge to acquaint myself very closely. And there is usually a rider about when one is required."

She doesn't glance up from observing his general person or her notes.

"I take it that you have?"

The itching in his left palm steadily rises. His fist clenches and unclenches with nary a thought to discretion as he replies, thigh still bouncing, "Yeah. I've been learning them. It's nice to have the option to get away without being alone, you know?"

The shard's annoyance, or so it feels, rises to the point of drawing Jayce's attention back to it, only to find threads of bright green clinging from his fingertips to the shard, mobile as they flex and extend. Between them, a paler glow grows and shrinks in tandem, its outer perimeter dancing with flickers of energy that seem most restless when his hand is fully open and the glow is at its largest diameter -- almost akin to an energy shield, only very fragile and apparently volatile.

He opens and closes a fist a few times, then glances at Wysteria with a cocked brow.

As a matter of fact, Wysteria doesn't know. She might say something to this effect—Yes she has heard that sort of thing is important to certain kinds of people before; how good, Mister Talis, that you've found an outlet for the impulse (for imagine! Wanting to rush off with only a great big animal for company; there are not at all the same thing as having a partner for conversation, and if you can't have conversation then surely it doesn't actually count as company)—

But the crackle of the anchor understandably draws the point of her attention.

She straightens considerably in her seat. Scratches a brisk note on the facing page pinned to her slate.

"Now that is compelling." Moreso than griffons. She jams her pen back behind her ear. Into the wound braid of her hair, maybe? Hard to say, save that it definitely appears to disappear entirely.

"How often do you use your anchor, and in what capacity? Have you only used it to close rifts?"

The steadily rising adrenaline demands more than paltry leg-bouncing. Jayce rises, mindful of maintaining the physical distance between them. "I haven't used it at all."

Now, he's opening his hand with more oomph; this thin field of energy flares in kind, edges snapping oxygen with a hungry air. "This degree of reactivity wasn't present when it interacted with the Thaumosphere," which had contained a sliver of lyrium within its globe.

"I don't know." Benedict was already nervous when this began, and it was momentum alone that had him signing up for further Research Shenanigans after the time travel debacle.

There's no reason to think anything is amiss at all until he, some short time after the dosage, is in the process of lighting up a cigarette-- using magic flame from his fingers, obviously-- and vastly underestimates the amount of fire it will produce, resulting in a sudden and thankfully isolated fireball. Even those who don't hear the brief roaring of it will hear the high-pitched gasp of surprise from its source, who drops the cigarette and steps back, pinching out the ends of his hair.

He stops, looks around the room, and his surprise melts abruptly into giddy laughter.

So uneventful had those first minutes been that Wysteria had actually shifted entirely from the stool and wandered back to the office's work table so she might rustle up a few additional blank pages for use in the day's notes. But this sudden whooshing of heated air draws her whirling back round,

"Oh, very good Mister Artemaeus!" she cries, pleased and hastening back in his direction with her pen and papers. "Do try it again."

Where normally caution and the usual social paranoia might inhibit him, Benedict is too visibly delighted by this development to do anything but grin at Wysteria. He snaps his fingers again, sending another fireball rolling toward the ceiling, expanding and extinguishing in the briefest of intervals.

Wysteria has the slate and its papers set against her hip. She is already scratching out a series of very tiny (to preserve the paper) notes into a margin beside another set made previously, her attention dividing between the page and the invisible crackle of arcane energies that balloon and contract in easy succession off Benedict's fingertips.

"I take it that wasn't the intended effect?" Is barely a question. She remembers only at the last moment to pitch her voice up to make it sound like one. It could be useful to hear him say so of his own volition.

"I was trying to," Bene giggles, "like... lighting a match." The tragically unlit cigarette remains on the floor, forgotten.

"It feels," he muses, darting his eyes around the room as his brain works well past capacity, "--great. Easy. Powerful." And it's making him cheerful, which is ominous enough in itself.

Wysteria is nodding and furiously scribbling down a further series of notes on her little slate.

"We should make our way to one of the courtyards," she says promptly. "This room is far too small for excessive magic use, and I would like to see whether use of your talents effects the duration of the lyrium at all. This way, if you please," she announces, all robust enthusiasm. With a bright click of her hard soled shoes, Wysteria whirls and makes to match from the project office with the clear expectation that Benedict will follow.

In a normal state, Benedict might ask 'will anyone care if I'm out doing reckless magic in a public courtyard,' but presently he has decided it's definitely fine. They might even be glad to see it, because it is likely to be extremely impressive.

He follows jauntily after Wysteria, wondering why he never noticed how lovely the tower can be with the light coming through the windows.

And off they go! Thus motivated, it doesn't actually take very long to traipse down a number of flights of stairs and find themselves trotting out into the Gallows' main courtyard. Presumably, Wysteria has talked more or less the entire length of the journey—something about lyrium and it's effects on mages, and it's historical use by battlemages in combat to enhance their arcane abilities, and so on and so forth. Hence:

"—so all that said and done, it is not unbelievable that you might be experiencing some version of that. If not that very thing, and it has everything to do with your being a mage and nothing at all to do with your being in possession of an anchor. Ah ha, here we are! Very well, Mister Artemaeus." Wysteria extracts her slate and note paper from where she'd crammed it into her armpit. "Go on as you please."

He listens to some of it, probably, but Benedict is mostly too busy thinking about everything at once and enjoying every sensory stimulus that he perceives. He's still grinning when they get down to the courtyard, and he tunes in again just in time to receive the go-ahead from Wysteria; he puts out a hand and ignites a nearby crate (who knows what it was storing? now we never will), followed moments later with a manic crushing motion of his hand, which collapses it entirely (something glass, by the sound of it).

[tbd]

He's known about this since Wysteria first began picking his brain on lyrium's effects, and despite (???)reassurances from the Provost, Barrow's deep concern has not eased. It's not that he can do anything to stop her-- when has that ever been the case-- but he swings by the workroom periodically to poke his head in, to scan his eyes over the participants to make sure they aren't dying and, perhaps more covertly, to make sure everything is as above-board as he's been promised it will be.
He's easily flagged down for interaction when he's here, and if only it weren't so fucking far up the tower for someone with knees as bad as his, Barrow would probably try to be here for most of the proceedings.

For these last few weeks Viktor's presence in the Research workroom has been inconsistent, which is only unusual to those who may have noticed he's been more willing to share his work hours with the rest of the division since Jayce first settled in. He's been spending more time in the old Felandaris project office, with or without Wysteria's company, occasionally emerging to direct someone to move such-and-such items here or there in a cooperative bid to re-elevate the space from storeroom status. Excited bickering has occurred; compromises have been made, both grudging and unserious; some ultimately meaningless points of contention linger; but the room is more or less ready, now, and thus have the trials begun.

any stage:

While it's been agreed that Wysteria will be administering the majority of the lyrium doses herself, Viktor is here to fill the narrow windows of her absence. Odds are an arriving subject will catch him in the middle of something, likely via the unwelcoming sight of his back facing the door.

Despite this, he is not unfriendly; the subject is directed kindly, if with an air of reserve, to sit on one of two purposefully placed stools in the room. The informative preamble, each time kicking up his passion for this enterprise, is far from dry as he delivers it. Only for the grim significance of signing the waiver does he dial back his energy—notably less so as the stages progress.

One carefully measured dose of lyrium is offered to its intended vessel by one pale, bony, long-fingered hand.

Some seconds after, perching on his own stool several feet away, with a papered slate (Wysteria's) on his lap, a pen (his) at the ready, and a faint and fleeting wince, Viktor settles into his typical sloping posture. With an encouraging gesture, then,

"Whenever you're ready."

stage yikes:

Later in the trial, at some otherwise ordinary hour, he might simply look up from his work, raise his eyebrows at what's just walked in, and then, in his own tapping version of a hurry, leave his seat to head off or catch up—

stage sus:

Though he's often a little sweaty around the hairline, and it's not exactly abnormal to see him looking especially pallid and clammy now and then, as the trial progresses, Viktor is functioning in this state more or less continuously.

They've nearly wrapped when he misses one of those substitution windows. He attends the next in a state of anxious distraction, alluding to his illness as an excuse, and then stops attending the office at all.

[ feel free to use any old part of this as a prompt, we can spin off from there. if you have any specific desires, hit me up. or just wildcard the hell out of him. get his ass ]

Edited (insert mj emote here) 2023-10-18 03:54 (UTC)

On the other hand, Jayce, upon arriving at the project office for his first admission to the trial, is preemptively intercepted by his partner, who stands directly in the doorway to block it with the crooked angles of his body.

"This office is closed."

While there's a full lineage of ink stains on Viktor's writing fingers, and the circles under his eyes are bruise-dark, his hair's showing signs of having encountered a comb within the last twelve hours and he does not appear to have slept in his clothes. Meanwhile, beyond the steely-eyed barricade he's made of himself, the office in question does not look to be in any stage of closed or closing.

There are many things that could be said of this interception, and of the individual who enacts it, that one might find ranges from endearing to pathetic. There are a few inner conflicts that might have skittered haphazardly in his chest had Jayce not already been warned of this retaliation by its perpetrator. Instead, they yield beneath the weight of quiet disappointment.

“And the sky is green,” he says, and maybe some of that disappointment seeps into his otherwise neutral voice.

Maybe it does. Maybe Viktor answers it in silence, with a certain thinning of his lips, and a glance up and down the length of the man stood before him in assessment of the way he's chosen to present himself. What Jayce is wearing, how he stands, whether or not is hair is combed and his chin shaven, it's all snatched up in one flickering moment—and in this moment, if he didn't have a crutch under his arm, he would almost certainly be folding his arms across his chest.

More than mere stubbornness, it's that note of disappointment, which hasn't slid off him quite as neatly as he'd have liked.

A simple tunic with fitted pants and his original footwear, straight and inherently confident in his own skin, combed and clean shaven, respectively. An outward appearance of cohesion to mask the disquiet within.

His shoulders, though. They slouch a little, just a second or two before he's reaching into his pocket, saying, "I'm glad you're here. This is for you."

Between his fingers is a small scrap of tied cloth, its contents a short note of gratitude on an even smaller scrap of paper and a metal coin with simple engravings on each side. He holds it out between them for Viktor to take, though a part of him wonders if Viktor might simply decline it instead.

These details are met with covert approval, and grudgingly so, as they do eliminate a legitimate avenue to turning Jayce away; if he'd shown up wearing any stage of the sadness beard, this would have been an easy argument. Of course he must be aware of this. Jayce is— what? He's glad?

Surprise slackens Viktor's jaw behind his lips, gives his brows a tug inward. Now ratcheted a notch deeper, his frown lingers through his look down at the little packet—a brief interlude, but still long enough to catch a tint of uncertainty before he lifts his eyes.

"What's this?"

He takes in every little shift of muscle in Viktor's face, stoic. When Viktor looks up, he'll find Jayce already looking at him.

"Recognition. A token of gratitude. Pointless sentiment. Take your pick."

By the same force that pulls them toward one another, always, their eyelines snap together, and they hold that way until Viktor finds it intolerable to continue—a mere handful of seconds. Yielding to the weight of guilty bewilderment, he sinks his gaze back down and reaches for this bit of cloth in Jayce's hand.

He doesn't ask if he should open it, but simply does, with the same care he applies to all things—and even so, the paper comes away with the cloth, slips loose of his fingers, and falls. With a jerk of reflex, he tries to catch it—

Faint relief that Viktor accepts the offering softens some of the tension in Jayce's chest, though doubt creeps into the space seconds later. Will he berate it? Say nothing? Defensively, he prepares his excuse-- that such a thing was made for all the minds involved in the planning, in case Viktor suggests the sentiment pointless, indeed. Mere seconds, these worries, and then a sudden movement from his-- former--

In this particular instance, pettiness would be both effortless and irreversibly costly, but it does not cross his mind a whit. Jayce leans in to catch the little, torn note, his knuckles bumping against paler skin.

"Now move aside, please," he says, holding the scrap out for Viktor to pluck or snatch or insert-other-verb-here, all carefully performed to avoid contact, he knows. "Or I'll tell Wysteria you're the one responsible for tampering with her list."

It's an unexpectedly tender moment, this soft collision of impulses without thought. What Jayce then says to him as he takes back the note is completely harmless, the pettiest of threats—and it neatly shoves him back from the edge of doubt. No, he thinks, finishing his gesture in a sharp snatch, he is definitely justified in blocking this doorway.

"Taking the high road, I see."

As he says this, he's opening the note's fold one-handed; reading it takes but a moment, and his examination of the coin, a glance at each side, is pointedly brisk. Without commentary or critique, and freshly steeled against the searing significance of these items by Jayce's own choice of delivery, he looks up. Handing it all right back to him would be an effortless, merciless riposte—for a moment, it may even seem like he will—

but he doesn't. Instead, staring Jayce in the eye, a simple question:

"Why?"

Taking the high road, or trying. Their fallout shouldn't be anyone else's burden. He will sully this one thing, this study of Wysteria and Viktor's, for a dim possibility because if it exists--

if lyrium could have a repeatable, targetable, regenerative effect on the body of Rifters--

Jayce frowns, then glances at the door frame. The trying, you see. Not wholly succeeding -- not with the sullen shift in his expression. The soft clench of his fists at his sides to stop himself from rubbing the back of his neck.

"Why do you care?"

What a thing to be asked, especially now, holding this token of gratitude, given in recognition of the very act that permits Jayce to stand here and make a needless ultimatum. The coin has barely even had time to grow warm in his hand. It's a painful question at its essence—and it worsens as it unfolds.

Why, indeed? Why block only Jayce from volunteering? The answer seems obvious at a glance—but really, why only him? Viktor doesn't relish exposing anyone to the very real risks inherent to this trial—in his view, the only truly acceptable subject is himself—but they're going to happen whether he supports them or not, and he would rather be here. But if the trial weren't so deeply important to him, would he still be here, or would he simply refuse to participate at all? Wherein lies the distinction? What makes him so willing to hand a waiver to someone else? Even on bloody-minded principle, what makes Jayce's life an unacceptable risk compared to that of any other person who might approach this office?

Pressed beneath the sickening weight of his own hypocrisy, Viktor buckles. While not for the reason it seems, the result is the same: he doesn't answer.

Jayce is blind and deaf to the turmoil rolling through Viktor, his gaze intentionally avoidant, and when the span in which a response is generally expected passes, his fists clench tighter. Yes, he is blind and deaf to his... former partner's turmoil, but he feels it all the same-- a sticky sensation, foreboding in its stillness, like the unnerving quiet of life preceding a heavy storm.

That same weight bears down on the both of them, pushing their discomfort until Jayce can't bear to wait any longer. He glances at Viktor. Doubletakes, because the sight pains in its subtle agony-- strikes his stomach and snags his heart with confused guilt. Here, he would offer comfort in the touch of his hand without a second thought had their friendship not been called into question.

Instead, he feels the urge with a sense of shame. He looks down-- down at Viktor's hand, and then he releases a small sigh. Softly, not unkindly, he says, "Look... Can we talk about this later?"

It's a terrifying proposition, actually, to risk irrefutable confirmation while seeking clarity, and not one he's keen to pursue, but it might extinguish whatever... this is, prompting this ridiculous attempt to block Jayce's entry.

This sudden shift tells Viktor just how ridiculous it is—it must mean he's lost his composure completely. What a fool he's being. Embarrassment compels him to spend the next moments scraping it back together in brisk swipes. Their eyes won't connect again.

"There's nothing further to discuss. Madame de Foncé will be administering the draught. You'll have to sign a waiver."

Through this he's securing note, coin, and cloth together in one hand, adjusting his carriage, shifting and reseating his crutch in advance of moving. Last of all, he leans to add in sharp undertone, "I don't need your protection any more than you need mine."

Then he turns to leave the doorway, to head back inside, where all will proceed as intended.

All of it, the guilt and worry, shame and confusion, they coalesce into acid in his gullet. Jayce glares at the the asymmetric position of Viktor's body as he retreats, lips thinned with a taut frown.

There's nothing further to discuss.

After his childish interference.

Liar, he thinks, and were it not for their location and reason(s) for attendance, Jayce might choose poorly and fan the flames. Instead, he takes a moment to mentally reset-- to shove the indignation and resentment and hurt beneath, somewhere dark and small and cornered -- and then approaches Wysteria's work station, politely ignoring Viktor's presence for the remainder of the day and each one after it.

[CLOSED-ish] Not what teacher said to do

wysteria; ota.

STAGE ONE

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STAGE TWO

STAGE THREE

Barrow, hovering - OTA

viktor, ota;

and closed;

is it, tho

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