fifthofthecovenant | The Last Voyages: IC Contact

Doggedly William keeps walking—up close, it's easier to hear the ragged edge to his breathing, notice how tight his left hand hand grips her arm. His right wrapped around her slack legs. Head slightly bowed, he misses the connection between Chase's movement and the scattering of her hair.

The exclamation is, of course, difficult to miss. William breathes in, says all at once, “Taking her to her cabin.” A glance up: he hesitates upon seeing Chase's eyes. All pupil. “You tolling?”

"Not even a little. I'm a witch. Jesus." She's not dead, he can tell she's not, he knows what "dead" feels like. Coma maybe? "Hang on, hang on-- let me."

He holds both hands flat in front of him, palms up, then lifts them-- and Misty's body floats a little up off William's shoulder.

For half a second he relaxes—shoulders no longer straining under her weight, his body feeling impossibly light. The lines of his face not so sharply etched.

“Don't—” he blurts the next moment, tugging at her as though afraid she'll be whisked away. He retreats a couple steps, twisting out of reach and backwards and carrying her with—moving with a grace that wouldn't be possible, were it not for Chase's magic.

“What're you doing?” he says in a low voice, though he knows. A candlestick summoned across a table; his overboarded self hurling through the night air. He scans the deck, furtive but deliberate. Looks Chase up and down, taking stock of his surroundings in a way he hadn't before.

"Magic. I just said I'm a witch. Misty knows." He's going to be good and not spill her secret. This time. "Let me help, come on. I can ghost all three of us to her cabin, or to wherever, or I can at least fly her along so you don't have to carry her like that, out in the open, for the hour it's going to take you."

He goes, somewhere along the way, from suspicious to watchful. His eyes stay on Chase, his breathing evening out as he studies the boy's face. Those eyes. “If it took six hours,” he says, “it'd be worth it.” He adjusts his grip on her, draws his shoulder blades back—as though expecting Chase to send her crashing down. Punishment for answering back.

The thought of ghosting through walls on a ship that's constantly rearranging itself, that adheres to no plan and contorts space like taffy, is terrifying. He carefully sets it aside.

“Does she like you?”

Edited 2021-08-01 01:12 (UTC)

"Well, I mean, she lied to me about some stuff, and then got all pissy when I said that probably means she doesn't actually like me, so. I don't know, man. Maybe she thinks she does." And they haven't really talked much since, but he hasn't been avoiding her, she just-- hasn't been around. Possibly because of this coma thing.

He gives an exaggerated shrug. "But I'm not going to hurt her. My magic has, like. Limits on it right now. No intent to harm, or it doesn't work."

He's not expecting the outpouring of grievances—or the casualness of it, as if they're having a beer or sitting at a lunch table. It leaves him bemused, head tipped to one side, not-quite-smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

But it quickly fades once Chase starts talking about limitations. “That's fucked up,” he says, straightening. Mouth a stern line, glowering implications behind the words.

They stay implications for now. “Here, let's float her to her cabin.”

"Maybe, but it's better than nothing." He'd take a lot of limitations to have any of his power back. This is an easy one to bear.

He holds up both hands again, and twists them around like he's pulling on the air itself, and Misty's body goes from resting fireman-carry like over William's shoulder, to floating on her back in mid-air like she's laying on an invisible platform. This is an easy one. He kept this spell up all during his fight with Caleb. She drifts ahead a little, floating on a stream of magic, and William can guide her. "So her cabin, you said? You know that doesn't lock, right?"

He falls reflexively into silence as soon as Chase turns Misty over, eases her away from him—somewhere between wary and respectful. She looks too close to dead, her eyes shut and her expression impassive.

It takes William a minute or two to get the hang of steering her—and even when he does it occupies the bulk of his focus, as though it's his attention that's keeping her suspended in the air. He has to fight the urge to walk with his arms spread under her. At the comment about the door he spares Chase a quick glance. “Should I be worried?”

"I mean, I don't know, just anybody can get into Misty's room. And everyone's all up in arms about murderers lately." He follows along behind them both, hands now in his pockets now that he's done the starting spell. "I guess I could try and figure out a magic lock for her door, but then she'd have to call me to get let out, and she might not like that."

It's almost fussy, the way he repeatedly scans their surroundings for would-be interlopers, stands in front of the elevator door after it dings open so there's no risk of it shutting on her. He lets Chase decide how best to orient her—skewed sideways, tilted so she's floating vertically—and then ducks in beside her.

He waits until the doors have closed to say: “I'm one of the murderers.”

Stupid little elevators. He pulls his hands from his pockets, pulls them together, and rotates them. Misty winds up vertical, skirt rippling as if in some nonexistent wind. "Okay." Not an expected answer. "Well, as long as you're not going to murder me or Misty, I'm going to say that's not really relevant right now."

He flicks a glance to Chase, mildly puzzled. "That was your concern, wasn't it?" Murderers.

"She'll be fine," he says, almost to himself.

"No, my concern was murderers hurting Misty while she's unconscious," Chase retorts. "So as long as you're not going to hurt her, or me, I don't really care all that much." Hands go back in his pockets, and he leans back on the elevator wall with a little bump. "Anyway, I think most of the people on this ship are murderers. Even the wardens."

What a strange thing to hear from someone supposedly invested in Misty's opinion of them. By now William's facing forward—only the elevator doors receive the benefit of his dubious look.

"How many people have you killed?" he asks conversationally.

"I said most not all," Chase grouses at him, shoulders hunching in defensively, while he frantically tries to decide how much truth to tell. If any. They're in an elevator, so it's private, so that's something he supposes.

Finally he mutters, almost under his breath: "Four."

The Last Voyages: IC Contact

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