The Blind Eternities to The Beach, Fandom, Saturday Night

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana staggered through the Blind Eternities, each foot weighing roughly fifty pounds, each step slower than the last. She shivered, though the Blind Eternities weren't cold, and tried to focus on remaining upright. She'd never passed out while planeswalking, nor ever heard of anyone who had, but such a thing could not be good. Likely, she'd never heard of it happening because anyone who ever did had died an ugly death.

Well, after the Mending, of course. Such things had never happened before the Mending.

This would have never happened before the Mending. She never would have had to strike these bargains; never had to seek out the Chain Veil. She would have been young and immortal and nigh-omnipotent forever. Not trudging through the Blind Eternities to go to--wait. Where was she going again?

Right. Fandom, yes. Her brain fuzzily tried to label it home, but even in the depths of hypovolemic shock - oh, yes, that's what this was, that made sense - she had enough presence of mind to tell herself she didn't have a home. Not anymore. Not for centuries. She had estates and townhouses and mansions, she had places she lived, but not a home. Home was where the heart is, or some such rot, and Liliana Vess had done her best to bury that centuries ago.

That's the trouble with necromancy, though, she thought with grim humor. We refuse to let things stay buried. How else would you have fallen in love with Jace?

Hey, she thought to herself, shut up. We don't think about him, remember?

Okay, that other part thought back and she was pretty sure that having an argument with yourself wasn't a great sign of your overall well-being, well then how about whatever's happening with--

She was saved from the indignity of telling herself to shut the fuck right up by tripping over her own two feet and falling heavily to the...ground? That wasn't really the right word for whatever the Blind Eternities was, but she wasn't really feeling a debate on nomenclature right now. Her whole body felt heavy and numb, her muscles felt weak, and she really didn't like the way her heart was beating. Too fast. Arrhythmic. Not good.

All she wanted to do was lie there, but that was...bad. For some reason. Definitely bad. Not just because it brought home how sticky she was, covered in blood from her head to her feet, but because of...of...definitely some reason. With a groan, Liliana pushed herself back up to her feet. Took another hesitant, stumbling few steps. She was close, she could feel Fandom pulling her like a beacon. Yes, she thought. Of course I can do it. I'm Liliana Vess. I'm undefeatable. I killed Kothophed, I'm going to kill Griselbrand and Belzenlok and Reza--Rezer--whatever his face is, and nothing as pathetic as a little blood loss is going to stop me. I am Liliana Vess and I...always...triumph. I--

And on that high note, Liliana's whole body sagged as she lost the battle with unconsciousness and fell again - this time, out of the Blind Eternities entirely and down onto the plane below.

Far, far, far below.

***

At first glance, it looked like a falling star, plummeting through the sky above Fandom's beach. Except rather than light, it was surrounded by inky swirls of darkness. But if someone sharp-eyed peered close enough, they could see through those swirls. See a pale flash of skin covered in red. See a mass of dark curls. Even see the occasional flash of purple fabric, mostly hidden amongst maroon.

Liliana Vess looked like a blood-drenched porcelain doll, hurtling to Earth. Her eyes were closed, her body limp. She looked small in the air, but at that speed, the crater she'd make when she hit would be impressive.

[For the nighttime superhero, please! Anything below the cut is NFB, but the rest is okay for radio!]

Comments

[hasaknightjob]

Home ownership was a whole thing. Throw in the fact that your home was alive and it added extra levels of weirdness. Like did you need to clean the gutters on your sentient home? Did it have gutters with this weird historic architecture?

Not that Marc was doing maintenance in the evening but he was taking a lap around the building just to make sure everything was okay. (...had that window always been there?) He'd intended that focus to be on Midnight. But then something - maybe instinct, maybe catching a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye - made him look up.

Then made him look up and look harder. Terminal velocity didn't really give enough time for close study. But Marc twigged person and problem fairly easily.

Which absolutely made it instinct when the suit came on and Marc, now faster and stronger than he was before, parkour leapt his way up Midnight and then launched himself into the air. He couldn't stop a fall, but if he could catch whoever it was before they hit the ground he could slow them down at the very least.

Then he'd deal with figuring out who they were and if they needed help or hindering after.

[deathsmajesty]

Honestly, those were pretty good priorities. At least according to the woman who would be paste at the bottom of a big crater otherwise.

And now we knew why you didn't pass out in the Blind Eternities. This would call for a The More You Know gif, but Liliana hadn't actually caught up with pop culture to that extent quite yet. And would also be a lot more worried about the paste-at-the-bottom-of-a-big-crater thing than patting herself on the back about the joys of discovery if she were conscious.

But she wasn't! So it was just a very pretty plummet to what would otherwise be certain doom.

Thank you for being the otherwise, Marc.

[hasaknightjob]

Well it was hard to interrogate a smear of organic material on the ground if that's what this turned out to need to be.

Don't ask if Marc knew that one from personal experience.

Marc didn't fly on the regular. Khonshu had only revealed the flight ability just over a year ago, him and his fucking secrets, so this wasn't something he kept in his regular rotation. At the same time he had gotten a crash (heh) course in how to use it once he finally knew about it. Especially when it came to aiming for a falling body.

So Marc angled himself just right, used the cape to catch the wind and steer as needed, and did his best to meet up with whoever this was and grab them when there was still enough space between them and the ground to try to mitigate the damage.

[deathsmajesty]

So, the thing about physics - not that Liliana knew about physics, she was a Witherbloom girl, fuck Quandrix - was that there's no way to grab someone gently when you're literally snatching them out of the sky. Not that Marc was terribly worried about gentleness when smearing was on the line, and, again, that was just good priorities on him. The grab did, however, jar Liliana enough that she could finish clawing her way back to consciousness.

'Falling from the sky' was not among the top ten ways to wake up. This was yet another thing to add to the list of important lessons we were learning today, but Liliana was gonna wait until she was on the ground, hopefully unsmeared, to update it. Her current plan was to planeswalk away from this clusterfuck. And, for a moment, it seemed like a good plan, as the inky vapour that heralded her planeswalking rose up around her--

--but then faded without doing anything, leaving her exactly where she was. Which was falling.

Wide purple eyes met Marc's - sorta - before she closed them tightly, biting her lip to keep from screaming, and curled up as much as she could to try to protect her head and neck.

[hasaknightjob]

There were eyes. They were just bright glowing white ones without any other features. What of it?

On the plus side at least now they were close enough that Marc knew it was Liliana. That helped. Especially when deciding how much he was going to err on the side of mitigating damage. She was nice to Steven. That earned points.

So Marc let his cape flare out and catch the air. It jerked the both of them, much like when a parachute unfurled, but the important thing was it significantly slowed their speed. This both helped that terminal velocity issue, and allowed Marc to try to aim for something that was comparatively easy to land on.

Not that anything was going to be fun to land on, but avoiding any of the jagged rocks on the beach seemed like a smart idea. Solid surface, yes, sharp surfaces that might take out internal organs, no.

As such, when they got close enough to the ground that Marc felt pretty certain they were going to land on the sand, he twisted them in the air so that now he was the one who would hit the ground first.

It wasn't going to feel nice but thanks to the armor it wouldn't hurt him like it would hurt a normal person, and any damage would immediately heal.

[deathsmajesty]

Whoa hey whoa now! She wasn't nice to Steven. Liliana wasn't nice. However, Steven was interesting to talk to and generally pleasurable company and--

Actually, looking at the ground that was quickly approaching, the narrative would like to make a motion to strike that other stuff from the record and agree that Liliana was very nice to Steven, thank you!

Liliana was grateful when his cape caught drag, a stray This one is useful, Cape Boy thought echoing through her brain because brains just did stuff during moments of panic. Honestly, she would have been appreciative if that were all that Marc's assistance had done. Still likely would have died considering her overall condition, but still, this would have been a valiant effort. But then she felt Marc twist in the air to form a landing pad for her and her eyes popped open again in surprise.

She was never going to understand heroes.

But that was a later philosophical exploration. She once again forced herself to go limp as they slammed into the sand, perhaps no longer hard enough to crater, but certainly enough to make a decent sized hole.

It hurt. Even protected by Marc, it hurt. But she was alive to hurt right now and that was everything that mattered. "...Ow," she groaned, rolling over slightly to spit blood onto the sand. Old blood, by the looks of it, which was...good? Probably?

And then she rolled off him completely, figuring that was a better thank you than trying to make words happen while she was still a dead weight on his chest.

[hasaknightjob]

Hey! Marc was not a hero! He did a job and in this moment that job involved there not being a corpse on what was otherwise a nice beachfront view of his home. So there.

Liliana moving away wasn't not appreciated as it gave him the chance to sit up and enjoy being able to breathe as the various impact injuries of his body knit back together. (The suit was useful. Annoying but true.)

Healing never took long so Marc moved over to Liliana's side quick enough to take a look at her. He dropped the mask but kept the rest of the suit on because hey: for all he knew it was It's Raining Residents Day on the island.

Marc noticed blood for certain and yeah it didn't seem fresh but he was still going to try to do a check on if it was hers (look, Marc had considerable experience in the blood on your body not being your own, he was making no assumptions here) and also if she had any other wounds that needed something resembling first aid before he got her to far more qualified help.

[deathsmajesty]

The most obvious markers of it being hers - the unhealthy pallor, the coldness of her skin, the way she was trembling - could also be chalked up to the fact that she'd just fallen through the sky for a bit. However, he could see no open wounds, no injuries, not even a nasty hangnail. All he could see, beneath the liberal coating of blood, was that every square inch of visible skin was covered in what looked like...scars, maybe? Etching? Whorls and lines not written on but carved into her flesh. From the way the etchings fell below her dress, it was a safe bet that is wasn't just on her visible skin.

And while it was hard to tell from the marks further down, because all the blood ran together too much to try to pick an origin, but from what he could see of her face, Marc could easily assume that the blood she was drenched in had come from those markings. The scars themselves looked old, healed over, but if she told him that she was in her current state because someone had decided to carve a design all over her body...yeah, that would absolutely track with what he was seeing.

For her part, Liliana seemed like she was just focusing on breathing at the moment, perhaps taking an internal inventory of all of her parts to see if she was missing any. One hand spasmed at her side, patting down her hip until she found a lump tucked inside a pocket. Once she discovered that was still there, she relaxed once again.

[hasaknightjob]

Okay, visual check done. Next for trying to make contact so to speak.

"Liliana?" he said, looking for any sign of a reaction. "Can you hear me?"

[deathsmajesty]

"Mmmmmmggrrghh..." she groaned again. Her voice was soft. Weak. "Steven?"

It sounded like him and also not like him, but Liliana was in no state to try to figure out that puzzle right now.

[hasaknightjob]

"Marc," he said. "Do you think you can move? I'm going to take you to the clinic."

Sure it was night but it was the emergency clinic. Presumably it was set up to handle near death by falling or potential mauling by purple elk or whatever the fuck.

[deathsmajesty]

Well, that was enough to get her active again. She looked at him with wide eyes that on anyone else but Liliana Vess might be called terrified, but on her were merely concerned, and shook her head.

*Strangers? An injured and helpless Liliana Vess in the hands of strangers? That's just begging for them to finish the job you started, Lili-girl.*

"No," she rasped out. "Nonononono."

*...nurtured the root...strong enough...the vessel...*

It took some concentration, but Liliana shoved the voices of the Chain Veil to the side. They weren't helping anything. "No. Please. No clinic."

[hasaknightjob]

It didn't look like any further danger was coming so Marc dropped the suit so he was now back in his regular clothes. He could always summon it back in an instant if he needed it.

"You look like shit," Marc told her. That kind of bedside manner was among the many reasons why he was not a Clinic employee. "C'mon. I'll get a rickshaw."

[deathsmajesty]

"Not going to the clinic," Liliana said, finding the wherewithal to push herself up and start to stagger away. "No."

It was an effort of will, but she managed to pull her head up enough to look around-- and nearly cried when she realized how far away she was from her house. Even if she summoned her steward, it would take them so long to get to the manor and all she wanted to do was lay down and rest...

*And then you'll die.* A raven on the beach looked at her and cawed. "Shut up," she told it and nearly fell over again.

[hasaknightjob]

Look, Marc was the last guy to consider it weird that somebody was having a one sided conversation with anything that looked like a bird. So he wasn't even going to question that.

Passed out person on what was effectively his back yard, however, was an issue. Even if Steven didn't read him the riot act for not doing more to help, there was the problem of who knew how much more trouble Liliana could get in without someone keeping an eye on her in this state.

"Fine. Where?"

[deathsmajesty]

Fuckin' birds though, amirite? (Somewhere, Arden looked insulted.)

"Huh?" Liliana looked up at him. It took her a second to parse his question. Her first instinct was to say her house, but the Raven Man was right. Just her, by herself and her steward was a risk. To say nothing of the next day when there would be strangers in the house while she was alone and vulnerable.

A long moment of consideration broken up by more whispering from the Chain Veil. "Shut the fuck up," she whispered, fists against her temples. With a sulky muttering, they subsided again for the moment and she took another glance around to see where they were.

Oh. Fuck. She had an answer for him. A good answer for everything but her pride.

Feeling her on the edge of making a stupid decision, the voices in the Chain Veil spoke up again. *...just a child...unimaginable...*

"I said, shut the fuck up!" she snapped, sounding much closer to her usual self, even if she drooped afterwards like that outburst had taken a good chunk of whatever energy she had left. Then she looked up at Marc, defeated. "MHA?" she asked. "Number 18. Sixth floor. Please."

[hasaknightjob]

Lucky for Liliana Marc having lived on the fifth floor meant he could guess who she was asking to be taken to.

"Your choice," he said. Not like he was going to argue with an adult who wanted to pick her boyfriend over the clinic. (Or, for that matter, with someone who wanted to make less than ideal decisions about their well being because even Marc knew that was hypocrisy of the highest order.)

He was, however, going to quickly get his phone out and send a text because Marc and/or Steven just going off somewhere with no notice had way more likelihood to be their minds fucking around with them. So a heads up to Watts that this wasn't a fugue state was in order, then Marc stood up and offered Liliana a hand.

"All right. You're owing me for the rickshaw though."

Not really but sometimes Marc liked to think he was funny.

[deathsmajesty]

Look, Liliana's first choice was to go home, in private, lock herself away and only return when she was once again healthy enough to either blast anything that looked at her funny or, at the very least, planeswalk away from it. However, she was getting bullied by the many entities that lived in her head and Ignis was the middle ground, okay?

Also, he wasn't her boyfriend. He was her...

She'd have to get back to you on that.

"Put it on my tab," she said, looking tired. Which was like acknowledging she owed him for the save but like without saying any of that.

[hasaknightjob]

Eh, Marc understood that. Saying the words "thank you" was for other people.

He let Liliana rest her weight against him as they carefully made their way to the street and summoned a rickshaw to get them over to MHA.