Валерий is creeping on your memories (tipofthetongue) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-04-10 22:30:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! ic/ooc, ! log, dante cavalli, valya zhiglov |
WHO: Dante Cavalli [Italy] and Valya Zhiglov [Poland]
WHAT: Dante catches Valya using his power...
WHEN: After training today.
WHERE: the big lounge/community room in the dorms
WARNINGS: language and punch-ups
STATUS: Log, but with ic/ooc comments below so someone(s) can break them up. Please.
Some days Valya really missed being able to travel. It wasn’t just the memories of train rides, hotel rooms, and cultural attractions. It wasn’t even the invitations he got from pretty strangers -- short-term relationships that allowed him to present himself however he wanted. It was the liberating feeling of leaving he missed. Back then, the only baggage he carried was an old leather suitcase. No one knew him. He didn’t get invested. He didn’t trouble himself with anyone else’s issues -- barring Alyosha’s. And that had been a role in which he’d been comfortable -- older brother, friend, and dickhead, depending on the situation. What he hadn’t realized was that even when you weren’t an older brother any longer -- or simply even a brother any longer -- there were inherent brotherly impulses that were difficult to constrain. It went beyond the thought of Alyosha whenever there was a knock on his door. (And the gutting plunge of No and Never Again that happened immediately after.) It was the urge to solicit advice and fill empty spaces. To make close friends and care a little too much. To be cutting and dismissive under the assumption he would be forgiven. That was, perhaps, the worst one. He found himself becoming more and more envious of familial relationships -- refusing to give help or advice when he could because being petty felt better than being miserable. Those were the days he decided he was getting too invested in people at IVI. He made a conscious effort to pull back. He reminded himself that they would not always be confined together by a force field. Today he’d settled down in the community lounge, siphoning memories like he used to with strangers in Poland. Mostly, he was adding to the giant memory palace he’d created for Alyosha. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have dozens already, but Valya was in a mood. He wanted evidence that he’d been a good brother, that he’d played his role well in the short time he was allowed. Dante's hyper-awareness of the Vols around him had not yet subsided, even with the week and a bit of relative peace from accidental power absorption. It was like being Moa Enquist, but worse, never able to truly rest in the company of others, always wondering who would next try to force him to relinquish them of their power for a couple of hours. And that was the best case scenario, being burdened by a willing participant. What most often lay in his wake were the unwilling, Isla Wolfe case in point. So when his mind flickered from the distasteful memories of being teleported into the lake to some long-forgotten fragment of two Polish boys sharing his table in the cafeteria, he knew this was more than just some fluke of his mind's wanderings. "Get out," he warned in a low growl, locking eyes with Valya. They were both close enough that he could reach out and touch him. Take his power if he wanted to. Be burdened once more with some shit he never truly desired. The number of times Valya had been called out for using his power were few and far between. Typically he was careful. There were ways to lead a person into certain memory paths, but that was far more effortful and time-consuming than Valya desired, particularly since he was in the lounge and searching at random. He was, admittedly, surprised by Dante’s acknowledgment, but his expression hardly betrayed the appearance he intended on keeping. If there was a scene - and Dante was a magnet for scenes - Valya didn’t want his pastime revealed. He lifted his eyebrows fractionally, like he had no idea what Dante was talking about. Meanwhile, the image of him and Alyosha trickled away like sand through a funnel. He was more concerned about Dante’s hostility than keeping it. Dante’s power was widely known, at this point, and the threat of it was enough to have Valya contemplating how he would make Dante forget he’d ever caught him in the first place. “Sorry?” It was less of an apology more like a polite inquiry. "I'm not stupid," Dante returned, still guarded but less hostile now that his mind seemed to be free to roam of it's own accord once more. Not much scared Dante, but having his emotions, his mind or his memories read? That was too much of an invasion of privacy for him to handle. "What are you doing, anyway?" Valya smiled as though he was being accused of something ludicrous and couldn’t understand what Dante was going on about. Really, in the seconds that he’d accessed Dante’s memories, he’d hardly done anything at all. There had been no time. “I never called you stupid,” he replied. He met Dante’s eyes, shrugged a shoulder, and frowned. “I’m reading.” Obviously, was the unspoken addition, as he idly gestured to a book in his lap. He didn’t want to give Dante reason to persist, though, so he rose to his feet, clapping the book shut. “But I think it is time for me to go, anyway.” On his way towards the door, he recognized a Flamingo -- one of Alyosha’s old teammates -- and reached out a hand to maneuver around her. Dante could go fuck himself if he thought he was going to stop Valya from using his power. Valya might not have called Dante stupid, but he could read the thought lingering in the other boy's gaze even without a power to help him along. Fucking Vols and their goddamned complexes. It was enough to motivate the Italian into reaching out just enough to brush against his clothes. Power. He straightened in his chair, body tensing as he awaited the fallout. Valya had anticipated the familiar surge of images flickering through his mind as soon as his hand had touched the Flamingo girl’s arm. Physical contact had always worked best for him -- a connection that allowed him to do what he wanted to quickly -- but to his immense dismay, he and the girl continued on their paths with nothing more than an exchange of polite words. It gave him pause - the kind of pause that settled right in the back of his throat - and he turned slightly, expanding his range to access her memory before she was too far away. The only picture his mind was processing was the one in front of him, though, and the uneasy feeling in the back of his throat turned into a bitter pill. “Ah.” This time, he didn’t bother disguising his surprise. Bowing his head, he let out a noise of incredulity and contempt. When his chin finally snapped upwards, he was looking at Dante through narrowed eyes. “So this is what you do? Steal powers to teach lessons and then pretend it’s an accident afterwards?” He opened his arms to Dante, but the gesture was hostile rather than welcoming. “This can be your shortest lesson yet, friend. Give it back.” Dante had experience with hostility -- plenty of experience -- to the point where it had become almost mildly amusing to watch the metaphorical backs arch and hair stand on end. He almost expected people to begin hissing at any moment. Lazily, he offered Valya a toothy smile as he watched him carefully from the couch. "Ah. Evidently you have not been paying attention, friend," he began and stretched an arm behind his back, not bothering to explain that he didn't actually teach lessons. Or at least, not yet. "You will have to wait a couple of hours. I cannot give it back." Dante’s smile grated. Valya wanted to gnash his own teeth in response. “You did it purposely, you--” His mind scrambled for an appropriate term in English. “--Dick.” And he was to spend a couple of hours with nothing, all because some asshole Italian was upset Valya had glimpsed his unceremonious appearance into the middle of IVI’s lake? He walked back over to the couch. The fingers of one hand curled and flexed, the other was wrapped tightly around the book he carried. “Get up.” Dante spent so much time using other people’s powers that apparently he wasn’t very good at using his own. Restoring someone’s abilities to them was an integral part of his power, and Valya intended to help him do it, if necessary. Dante didn't budge. “Vot zasranec.” Valya let out another puff of air. It might have been a laugh had he been able to summon up actual humor. He put up with a lot of assholes, but because he wasn’t related to any of them he was starting to wonder why he bothered. “Really?” Why did he fucking bother? The more he thought about it, the less he was able to come up with an answer. He suddenly felt consumed by bitterness and fury. Dante had taken the one thing that still tied him to his brother -- something integral to his identity. And he was supposed to wait it out? No. It had taken him all of one second to come to that conclusion, and after that, Valya dropped his book and reached for Dante, fully intending to wrench him up from the couch and throw him into the nearest wall, for lack of a lake. As soon he saw the other boy's fingers unfurl from the book's spine, Dante knew what was coming for him -- and welcomed it. His collar wrested sharply against the skin on his neck, his own fingers curling into a fierce ball as he instinctively pushed back. This wasn't smart. This was not how he was meant to behave. But he was angry. Angry. All that he could feel was the frustration that had been building up over the course of the last few months, the inability to express himself the way he knew he needed to -- and yet could not for fear of revealing too much, of being too vulnerable. So he threw a right hook instead. The impact of Dante’s fist with Valya’s cheekbone might’ve sent Valya reeling, but he’d never started a fight without expecting to be hit and had lost himself in a rush of adrenaline. He registered an unpleasant throb; it clicked into place as a punch somewhere in his mind, but the rest of him was serving a different purpose by this point. Blood trickled down from a cut beneath his eye. He wrapped the knuckles of his left hand more deeply into Dante’s shirt, trying to spin him around and drive him back with his forearm and shoulder. The other hand was already curled to stick Dante with a punch of his own. Dante's gaze locked into the pair of angry, blue eyes of his opponent-- SMACK. he rises, grasping onto the sill of a window for support. beyond the panes, his eyes catch sight of letters carved into a wall. A L Y O … SMACK-- His mouth fills with the metallic-like taste of warm blood. |