[ It's cold. He doesn't remember what season it was, he realizes suddenly. It's like grasping at water, it slips through his fingers even though he thinks for a second he's got a hold on it. He doesn't remember if it was winter or summer, but he knows right now that cold is seeping into him like those middle days of fall.
It isn't dangerous yet. It isn't frigid. It is enough for him to disregard all thought, all panic, and focus instead on glowing himself clothes. One set of briefs. One plain white shirt. One extremely simple pair of jeans - it takes longer, denim is hard for him and he never could figure out why. One flannel shirt, the only one he can make, one he's made over and over again identically since he was seventeen and really into Kurt Cobain. Socks.
Shoes take the longest. They're surprisingly fucking complicated, he's learned exactly one pair and it involved practically doing goddamn surgery to get it right. There are layers you don't even think about. A mix of four or five different kinds of material.
He settles down on a tree root to do it, dipped beneath a layer of fog that floats up densely at chest height when standing. Keeps his back to the bark, with his eyes snapping up every few seconds to search the minimal distance he can see. For once, his glowing forearm isn't reassuring - it feels like a beacon, like he's raising a red flag despite the fact that no eyes - animal or human - would be able to make it out from ten feet away.
It wasn't animal or human that dragged him out here. Ripped his robe off in the process.
Do they know what he can do? Surely they must. Do they know it was pointless, that he can make the things he needs to survive? Maybe, maybe that's why they ripped him away from Mace. To make them both more vulnerable while alone. To punish them for plotting an escape.
Ian gets no protection while he's wounded, nobody who knows how to actually fight rather than his panicked under-trained "stab them if you can reach them" approach.
Mace gets no resources. No water, no food, no tools, no shelter - nothing, save what he can pick up scattered on the earth or harvest from the trees.
What's the fucking point, though? It could obviously kill them, whatever's doing this. The only rational explanation is simple and incredibly unfair.
Someone just wants to watch them suffer. New and unique ways of it, considering present circumstances.
His high-tops are barely tied when he hears the first cracking branch break off of a tree some ten yards away. His head snaps up, his throat catches, and there's a long, long debate over whether or not that could be Mace. Whether he should go toward or run away from the sound. Frozen again, because apparently he always freezes now.
(And cracks apart.)
The second breaking branch is what decides it for him - closer, close enough that he can make out over the fog the way the entire god damn tree is spasming back and forth like something great and terrible is swaying it.
He bolts in the direction he was dragged, barely mindful enough not to go tripping over tree roots. ]
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It isn't dangerous yet. It isn't frigid. It is enough for him to disregard all thought, all panic, and focus instead on glowing himself clothes. One set of briefs. One plain white shirt. One extremely simple pair of jeans - it takes longer, denim is hard for him and he never could figure out why. One flannel shirt, the only one he can make, one he's made over and over again identically since he was seventeen and really into Kurt Cobain. Socks.
Shoes take the longest. They're surprisingly fucking complicated, he's learned exactly one pair and it involved practically doing goddamn surgery to get it right. There are layers you don't even think about. A mix of four or five different kinds of material.
He settles down on a tree root to do it, dipped beneath a layer of fog that floats up densely at chest height when standing. Keeps his back to the bark, with his eyes snapping up every few seconds to search the minimal distance he can see. For once, his glowing forearm isn't reassuring - it feels like a beacon, like he's raising a red flag despite the fact that no eyes - animal or human - would be able to make it out from ten feet away.
It wasn't animal or human that dragged him out here. Ripped his robe off in the process.
Do they know what he can do? Surely they must. Do they know it was pointless, that he can make the things he needs to survive? Maybe, maybe that's why they ripped him away from Mace. To make them both more vulnerable while alone. To punish them for plotting an escape.
Ian gets no protection while he's wounded, nobody who knows how to actually fight rather than his panicked under-trained "stab them if you can reach them" approach.
Mace gets no resources. No water, no food, no tools, no shelter - nothing, save what he can pick up scattered on the earth or harvest from the trees.
What's the fucking point, though? It could obviously kill them, whatever's doing this. The only rational explanation is simple and incredibly unfair.
Someone just wants to watch them suffer. New and unique ways of it, considering present circumstances.
His high-tops are barely tied when he hears the first cracking branch break off of a tree some ten yards away. His head snaps up, his throat catches, and there's a long, long debate over whether or not that could be Mace. Whether he should go toward or run away from the sound. Frozen again, because apparently he always freezes now.
(And cracks apart.)
The second breaking branch is what decides it for him - closer, close enough that he can make out over the fog the way the entire god damn tree is spasming back and forth like something great and terrible is swaying it.
He bolts in the direction he was dragged, barely mindful enough not to go tripping over tree roots. ]