Pascal

Push or Jump | The Fight For Survival

No worries-- I am really patient, and still really sorry about my own delay. Take care of yourself first!

Push or Jump | The Fight For Survival

”Bring her back here. I will call 911.” A tall, dark-haired man said, gesturing to Jamie, and another man, who was blonde. They were both holding the arms of an unconscious woman, who was bleeding from multiple injuries. Jamie seemed to trust the man, and he lifted the brunt of the weight as the other man unlocked the door and pushed it open. They brought the woman inside and rested her on the table. “No, you are not calling anyone.” The blonde said, a bit threatening in his tone. The man that Jamie arrived with seemed hesitant about trusting some stranger, but Jamie was insistent. Even the dark-haired man seemed surprised by Jamie’s trust. “He’s a stitcher!” She claimed. The man’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about… I am not—“ He was cut off as the man bluntly argued. “Shut up. Can’t you see she’s dying?!” He asked, gesturing to the darker skinned woman once more. The man looked between the group, and then groaned, turning his attention to the woman, tending to her wounds in moments.

Jamie was jolted awake by the usual, culprit, electric shocks to her system. Her eyes snapped open as her muscles tensed and tightened. She let out a scream, but stifled it after a few moments on her own. She knew that it only made her situation harder when they made her suffer the consequences. The Division had their labs set up very well. They knew what Jamie was, and they wanted to know what she saw. She had thus far resisted for the most part, but she was losing her will. Every morning she was woken with shocks, and then a vice came over the speaker, demanding to know what she saw. She usually gave BS responses, things that she thought they might want to hear, but they didn’t mean anything, and they sure as hell weren’t the things she actually saw.

“I see myself frolicking in a freaking field.” She said, spitting. A few more shocks jolted her, and made her feel ill. They liked to get her drunk, which made her visions stronger, and lowered her inhibitions. As a result, she woke to shocks, in addition to a hangover…every, single, morning.

“You are never leaving this place.” The voice said, and then it cut off. Jamie took a few deep breaths, trying to center herself, without going back into the visions. That was the hardest part. She wanted to escape, but if she hid in her visions, if she continued to watch, then they would drag her out and demand answers. Jamie must have fallen asleep at some point, and she woke when people were unstrapping her from the chair and dragging her down a hallway. She pulled her arms, but the grip tightened. Those in the Division made sure to limit abilities, but there were some areas where they wanted the supernaturals to still have their abilities. The walk was long, as they were bringing Jamie to a building where she couldn’t have her visions. Her powers were blocked here, and she could feel the weight on her as they entered the area.

They brought her to a room with another man, which surprised her greatly. Before, she had shared a room with a woman. It hadn’t gone very well, though. To begin with, the girl was incredibly weak, and because she was weak, Jamie had tried to harden. They didn’t want Jamie to harden. They wanted her to feel as if it was hopeless, like she was never going to get anywhere. Further, she started to have visions about the girl, and they wanted her to have visions about some other people… like the son of a pair that they had disposed of quite a few years before. The man, Samson, was strong, and could certainly pose a threat, given the right circumstances.

Being around someone who still remembered the feeling of sunlight on their skin might make her feel even worse, and since it was an apparently stubborn and obnoxious man, she might just give up and give in. What the Division had not realized, however, was that their watcher already had a vision of the man who would become her roommate, she just had to pull the pieces back together. Jamie fell to the ground when they tossed her in the room, and was slow to get up, still obviously a little drunk. When she saw the man, her eyes widened, but she kept quiet. She wasn’t going to tell them that this was the man she saw. Instead, she backed against the wall and sat down, pulling her legs up against her. She needed to rest, and the less she talked, the better it was for everyone.

Push or Jump | The Fight For Survival

So, this is an awful time to ask, but I thought that when you suggested they were in the labs and going to escape, that they had been there a while. Is it alright if my character has been in the labs a while, and is maybe transferring rooms to room with one of yours?

Huge apologies for the delay. Work got hectic and my brain had a hard time functioning very much.

~~

Edit- I got a post up! I didn't put Mason in too much, because he wouldn't be involved in this, really, and depending on how long they are in the labs, I didn't want to have to write a ton of posts about him working at a coffee shop. Let me know if there is anything I need to do/change!

Hunted (Pascal and Merbella)

The swim wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the most difficult thing, either. The man passed her, and sat on the shore, once again clearing his boots of water as she was still getting carried down the current. When she finally reached the other side, she was a hundred yards downstream from him, and she was exhausted. She climbed to a dry area and simply lay there for a few minutes, concentrating on her breathing. Fortunately, it was still morning, so it wasn’t terribly cold out, but the sky was still overcast, so she wasn’t going to be able to just lay there for a while and dry off easily.

Her stomach began to rumble, and she knew that she needed to get up and actually wring her clothing out, as well as get her back so that she could eat something before they continued. Hopefully the man at least kept her bag out of the water, as he had promised. She took a few minutes to get up and meet him partway, beginning to get grumpy from the time that they were spending traveling. As usual, the man didn’t say much, and she was honestly beginning to miss the yelling and screaming that went on in her own home. She took the bag when it was offered, laying it over her shoulder, and took another drink of water. She would have to move a bit slower, because of the thick fabric of the dress, and the way it threatened to cling to her legs, but she didn’t really have a better option.

Hopefully there were no thieves about because she was certainly not being stealthy as her feet made wet squish sounds with every step that she took. The next few hours, once again, passed in silence. She ate an apple as they walked, growing hungry for more but not adventurous enough to just try something random that she saw growing. She dried, for the most part, but the sky never really did clear up. She made him stop again so that she could excuse herself and relieve herself in the woods another time, feeling like it was only her who had to do other things while they walked. This man was apparently content with walking until the season changed.

“How much further is it till we reach a proper town?” Rhys asked upon returning to him. She was getting really tired, and she wasn’t sure how many more days of walking she could manage. Her body was not built for this sort of thing, and she knew she would be absolutely horrid company by the morning.

Hunted (Pascal and Merbella)

When the man actually spoke to her, using more than a simple sentence, Rhys was shocked. He said that they needed to cross the river, but he didn’t want to force her to cross when she wasn’t comfortable. Rhys looked at the water’s speed, and though it wasn’t like the lake they had fallen into outside of town, it didn’t look like too brisk of a current. She opened her mouth to respond when he sighed and spoke again, admitting that he was being a jerk.

At least now he told her why he was being a jerk. She began to secure her bag as she thought about her own response, knowing that she had to handle this carefully, since he was a temperamental individual. “I understand that you want to keep me out of whatever it is that makes the guard search for you...and I won't press for information. But if they decide that I am involved, and that I do know things, it won’t matter that it isn’t true.” It did not matter if she knew nothing about the stranger, because the guard would never believe that he had never told her a name, or indicated where he was going. If they found her, she was in trouble no matter how much she knew. In some ways, she agreed that it was better not to know, because then she couldn’t give them honest answers when they tortured her for information. But then again… she might see where he was going even if he didn’t tell her, one of these nights.

Changing the subject a bit, Rhys walked up to the river beside him. “Do you think there is a chance of not soaking my clothing through?” She asked, hoping that the superficial question would help break any of the tension from their very brief earlier conversation. The river was deeper than she thought, even near the shore, though, and she really didn’t have a chance. With a resigned sigh, Rhys decided it would be better to cross now. She took her leather satchel and handed it to the stranger. “If you could keep this out of the water as much as you can…There are things in there I would like to not get wet.” She admitted, knowing he had seen her book at some point—whether or not he had noticed it was another matter.

When he was ready as well, she lowered herself into the water, picking out a spot on the opposite shore and describing it. If she kept that spot in mind, then at least she could aim for it. Foolishly, though, the spot she picked was directly ahead of them, rather than acknowledging that she was going to end up moving with the current quite a bit as she tried to make her way across.

Hunted (Pascal and Merbella)

The stranger’s return startled Rhys, but his exchange with Endi surprised her more. She didn’t respond to him for a few moments, still trying to grasp the fact that he knew the exact excuse she had given the creature. He had made noises towards it before, and while that had just been ticks in the crazy column in her head, she was beginning to think that he could actually communicate with…whatever Endi was. Stop being ridiculous. Rhys told herself, and proceeded to try to convince herself that he had been hiding out nearby, and listened to her tell the creature those things. But that was nonsense, and she knew it. Why would he have been hiding out, and then waited so long to return? As a matter of a fact, if he was so far away, how had he heard her at all?

More likely, he heard the scream, finished whatever task he was doing, and then wanted her to be apologetic and so rushed back just a few moments before. Rhys felt a little better, having a more ‘reasonable’ mindset regarding the stranger’s response. Though that still left a strange silence between them. She didn’t apologize for screaming, and instead she looked back down at the paper, finishing a few lines before closing the book gently. What could she tell him that wasn’t an apology? She sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him the truth--that she had visions of events that might just come to pass. Out of spite could tell him a half-truth; she had nightmares every night. But what would he care? He barely spoke to her, and never answered her questions.

The stranger approached and dropped a red apple on the ground. She looked at it for a few moments before picking it up and rubbing it on her dress, which wasn’t clean by any means, but made her feel better. She was about to thank him for the apple when he apologized, catching her off-guard once more. He reminded her of someone who wanted so desperately to be disliked, but still couldn’t help doing nice things. There was a guard in her town like that, for a short while. He got himself killed, doing nice things. Rhys took a bite, and thanked him before taking another. He mentioned that there was water, and her gaze flickered in the direction that he pointed before going back to him. He put a few more apples down, telling her to eat, and then they would leave. She finished the first apple, spitting out only the stem and some seeds, and put the other three in her bag. She never ate a lot in a sitting, and changing that now would give her a stomach ache.

With their short exchange finished, the pair lapsed into silence once more. Rhys cleaned up and prepared to follow him once more. Just as he had suggested, there was water about an hour’s walk away. How had he gotten that far before? She wondered briefly, and then dropped the matter. She wasn’t going to get answers from him, and not asking fared better for her in the long run. Rhys filled up her water, drank most of it, and then filled the skin again, wanting to have water to bring with them. She ate another of the apples there, offering one to the stranger as well, before they moved on. In truth, she didn’t entirely mind the silence. Her house had always been loud. Her sisters were always yelling and fighting, and her father, when he came home, was always drinking and angry. Rhys took after her mother, who was far too soft-spoken to advocate for herself. They got along well, for the most part, but Rhys still couldn’t talk to the woman about her nightmares.

Hunted (Pascal and Merbella)

Her dreams that night were turbulent, and they were mixed with strange visons. Some were just jumbles of images, like herself running, or a stranger injured. She usually didn’t even draw those because there wasn’t enough detail. One vision, however, was quite detailed that night. She was a patron at a tavern, getting a drink and some food. In the vision, Luka was with her, complaining that he wasn’t going to stay. He soon left, having better things to do, but Rhys didn’t complain. She took a seat in a corner. The dream grew hazy, and there was music being played, some strange melody, along with some gypsies dancing in the room. Most of the patrons in the bar were wet, and the floor was a bit slippery, causing one of the dancers to fall. That wasn’t the source of distress, though. The source of distress was the sound of a crack followed by the building shuttering. It was lightening, and the dampness of the tavern couldn’t stop the spread of flames, which engulfed the door. People were burning to death, and Rhys woke screaming.

It took her a few moments to calm herself, longer because she was in a strange place now, and alone. Wrapping her arms around her legs, Rhys forced herself to take deep breaths. She had to stay calm, and draw the tavern so she wouldn’t forget it. She scooted out from under the tree, and looked up at the sky, seeing that I was overcast. Calm down, Rhys. You cannot prove that this is ever going to happen, let alone soon. She reminded herself. Rhys was actually relieved when she saw that Luka was gone. She didn’t see Endi immediately, because the creature had to move back a bit when Rhys screamed. See, Rhys… The man has already left. He is not going to follow you into a town. She reminded herself as she opened her bag.

It was then that her gaze fell on Endi, and she realized that the man might be coming back. “It was just a nightmare.” She told Endi quietly, her throat now hurting more than a little from screaming and her general state of being parched. Rhys quickly worked on the sketch of the inside of the tavern, trying to push her mind to the point before the lightning. She jotted a couple of notes on the paper: lightning, wet clothes and floor, and then began to draw some of the gypsies, trying to remember the decorations on their clothing and that of the tavern itself, so she could distinguish it at a later date.

She was incredibly protective of the drawing, and even as Endi neared, she pulled the drawing away a little, not wanting the creature to see the things that she drew. No matter how much she tried to focus on the tavern, the images of the people burning was stuck in her mind, and so she finally flipped the page and began to sketch the part that haunted her, hoping that putting it on paper would help take it out of her head.

Hunted (Pascal and Merbella)

Though she had asked a different type of question this time, the man’s response made it obvious that he was not interested in answering questions at all. She was surprised by the snapping, but she didn’t complain to him. After all, what would be the point in arguing further? Maybe he was just exhausted from the travels, or whatever had preceded them. He seemed to fall asleep, which surprised Rhys a bit. She was not sure she was going to sleep at all around this strange man in a strange forest, but he seemed to do so with ease. Rhys noticed the creature coming around behind her, and debated putting the book away. She was so used to guarding the book that she reflexively pulled it closer to herself, before she scolded herself and continued to work. What would be the harm in Endi seeing it, really?

Rhys didn’t have too much time to debate just how much of her book the creature could see, because the man spoke up again. She hadn’t expected him to reply to her comment, and she was taken aback when he did, and responded so angrily. She was left sitting, confused, her mouth agape as he insisted that he wasn’t a bad person. She had never said he was—she had thought it a few times, but mostly when he was acting hostile towards herself or the guards. She watched him pull his boots and shirt on, and she wondered for a moment if he was just stepping away to clear his head. When he kept walking, she realized that he was possibly just leaving, and she closed her book, signaling apparently for Endi to go and catch up with him.

She took a few moments to compose herself. Unlike his clothes, hers were still wet, since she hadn’t felt comfortable taking them off by the water with him. He was a fair distance ahead of her, and she didn’t rush to catch up. Perhaps a little space was what he needed right now. She walked behind him, gradually picking up her speed to close the distance between them, but giving him a few yards still. They walked until after it got dark, and Rhys found herself hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. Further, she could barely see the steps in front of her. After she tripped on the third root, she put her hand on the tree, stopping. “Sir…I am going to stop.” She said. It wasn’t a request for him to stop as well, just a statement that she couldn’t go any further. She had no idea how far they were from her home, or from water or food, and she didn’t have anything in her bag to help with that. While it wouldn’t be the first time she had gone to sleep hungry, she preferred not to sprain her ankle when tripping over these roots as well.

Looking around, Rhys saw a spot where the tree roots had grown out on a bit of a hill, leaving a small area beneath the roots that was concealed. She knew that the woods were not a safe place, and she wanted to provide herself as much cover as she could, so she began to move a few branches to go underneath of the roots. There was quite a bit more space under the tree, though she didn’t request for the man to join her. He would do what he needed, and she would do the same. She couldn’t force him to stay with her, and so she saved herself the frustration of being refused.

Hunted (Pascal and Merbella)

Though Rhys had never had a pet, when she was young, she used to spend a bit of time at the local stables with horses. They had always been nervous around new people, and would move closer slowly until they could smell her to see if she was a threat. She got used to being patient, waiting for them to be comfortable. The stranger didn’t answer her question, but instead addressed the behavior of the creature that was still edging closer to her. “She?” Rhys questioned, though she didn’t wait for an answer.

Instead, Rhys straightened a little, slowly, and turned to the creature. “Hello, Endi.” She said, repeating the name she had learned from him before. Rhys didn’t reach out, or try to grab at the creature, she simply let the creature continue to assess the situation. The man said that they would depart soon, and he sounded like he was going to fall asleep. He had moved closer to her, but he certainly didn’t inspire confidence. He had never answered her question about why he was running, but what bothered her more is that he simply ignored it. Had he stated that he didn’t care to answer her, she would have been much more content. His lack of response had the intended outcome, though. Rhys didn’t bother to ask any more questions. He clearly had no interest in answering them, or in posing his own to learn anything about her.

She was tempted to ask where the nearest town was, so that she could depart there, unsure of whether that was his plan as well, but she didn’t really want to break the silence again. Though she considered herself a decent person, she could be a bit stubborn, especially when she felt someone was being unnecessarily rude. After some time in silence, though, her frustration fizzled away, and she remembered that without him interrupting, she would have been raped by the guard. Whether or not he had been in the back room and she had helped him, the guard would have likely made the same demand, and so she really ought to be thankful.

Rhys shifted positions in order to help dry a bit more of her gown, though it would certainly take longer than his clothing, before she spoke again. “Thank you, for stopping that guard.” She said, figuring that if it wasn’t a question, she wasn’t really ruining his peace. Letting the silence fall between them once more, Rhys took out her writing pencil and journal, and continued to sketch on one of the pages. She was filling in a few more details from her dreams last night, which didn’t involve the ones surrounding her, at least to her knowledge. She usually had dreams that didn’t seem to mean anything, but she could never be sure, and so drawing them and jotting down details helped her get the images out of her head, especially the more violent ones.

This one wasn’t particularly violent. There was a small vending stall with some produce knocked on its side in a busy market, and a figure running through the parting crowd. Most of the people were blurs, and so she didn’t add a lot of detail in, but it was a very complicated image, and so it was a good way to pass some time. For all she knew, this was part of the scene that had played out that morning, with the man running through the crowd. She didn’t have a good image of him in her head, and since she had been in her shop until he burst in, she had no idea if a few stalls might have been knocked and its items on the ground. A little while longer passed, and she began to pack her items back in her back, saving her journal for last so she could look through it once more. The journal was her most important possession, and she kept it very private. People would think she was strange for drawing such dark things, and even more so if they knew why she kept a journal at all. With everything packed away, Rhys rose to her feet to continue to walk, unsure what direction the man would be choosing, and quite confident that he would want to do the navigating.

Hunted (Pascal and Merbella)

(That's cool. It's my bedtime.)

With everything important taken out of her bag, Rhys spared a glance over to the man. He was laying on the grass, bathing in the sunlight, until that strange blue cat appeared once more. She tried not to gawk, but she had to open up her journal and flip through the pages, comparing the drawing she had with the creature that was sitting in the man’s lap. From her view, it most certainly looked like the same type of creature, but he couldn’t tell if it was this one exactly.

She still remembered some of the vision it came with, too. There was a building on fire, but most of the building was non-descript. In her visions, the building was gray, and the flames were bright orange. She remembered staring up at the bright flames, thinking that the sun itself couldn’t be brighter, and then this patch of blue leapt out of one of the windows. She had been so stunned by the blue in the vision that she hadn’t even drawn the building in her journal after waking. She had only drawn the creature, wishing that she had colors with which to draw, rather than stubs and half-used pencils that she had gotten from shops.

Now she could barely remember the building, which was a testament to how poor her memory was, or how frequent her visions plagued her dreams. She had dated the vision, and it was over a year before. It was certainly possible that this vision had already come to fruition, and what would she do if it hadn’t—warn the creature that it might just leap out of a burning building sometime in the future? There was no way, it was foolish of her to even think about it.

Flipping through the other pages, she almost didn’t notice the creature saunter over towards her, watching her with its big eyes. She closed her book slowly, and put it back on the ground, only meeting the creature’s gaze for a few moments. She heard the man talking to it, but she didn’t know if it could really understand her, or if the man was simply insane. “Why were they after you?” Rhys asked, speaking up in a way that seemed abrupt, and broke the silence of their sanctuary. She saw the other wounds on his chest, reminding her of a bodyguard or pirate of some sort, but she didn’t like to make that many assumptions.

With her book set aside, Rhys slowly began to take her hair out of the braid it had been in, and pulled it back into an easier ponytail. It was still wet, and it didn’t feel that gross, but she really just wanted the hair out of the way. It also gave her something to do with her hands, since she wasn’t sewing or drawing, which were her two most common hobbies.