The man’s features are soft in the light of a street lamp. Gently sloping from the outline of his prominent nose and small chin.
HALF LIGHT - (This is wrong. You need to move. You need to get out of here.)
LOGIC - (It’s just a human.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (It’s not real. You’re just seeing things again.)
Harry resumes his focus on his ‘no really I’m just chilling here’ vibes. Perching on a bench and sucking down a cigarette with an effect of laziness. He watches the guy out of the corner of his eye. Until he can’t. Until he’s starring openly, head tilted and eyes wide. His feet stand him upright but he doesn’t move. If he looks away or if he gets to close he'll be gone. What will he do then?
Norman, have you ever seen those videos of dogs at the airport, greeting soldiers back from tour? It’s a bit like that. There’s a slight trembling through Harry’s body.
Edited (sorry sorry I just kept thinking of new things) 2022-12-09 16:34 (UTC)
[the Kim lookalike watches right back, then nods simply, touches a finger to his lips, and makes the universal gesture for 'follow me', treading toward an alley.
above that alley, hidden from view behind a stairwell exit, crouches Norman, a strand of silk already attached to the lip of the roof, ready to lower himself down at the opportune moment.
not only can he see Harry trembling, but he can feel the vibrations, and it activates that spider's sense of prey within him. yes. yes. come into the web, you fly, you disgusting little insect. let him help you. coccoon you up in death and let the evil bits slough off in resurrection.
he shakes his head a little, not really liking how hard that prey drive goes, how close it edges to mental territory that he's been trying to fervently stay out of. but the objective remains the same. he can still imagine poor Beat dying at Harry's hands, can still smell the aftermath of the grocery fire, see Fiddleford's reaction to Marco being murdered... and knows it has to stop.]
Like a dog, Harry follows. More confident now, he knows he must’ve fallen asleep on the bench. So Kim is taking him back to Voyager Road. The neon lights of the video rental. They will go into the alley and they will come out onto the street and be there again. She’ll be there.
He hurries up. If he’s fast enough he can catch her. Before she boards the aerostatic, before she gets to Mirova. Before she puts the entire Pale between them forever.
[Not-Kim is at the end of the alley, his back to Harry, staring up at the wall as if - but wait, no, something is written there. in a sprawling hand, in chalk:
gain what you have lost by losing what you no longer need.
by necessity, the cryptic statement is hard to read from a distance. one has to come far enough into the alley that there's ample space between them and the mouth of it to make it out properly.
[as Harry draws closer to the letters, Norman lowers himself slowly from a fire escape by his webbing, silent and stealthy in the dark. in the instant that Harry's hand makes contact with the human doppelganger's shoulder, Norman strikes, his fangs biting into the back of Harry's neck just enough to be able to dose him with venom. He wraps his spider-legs around Harry so that he can restrain him long enough for it to take effect, hoping that it's quick, that he can get the answer he needs and then finish the plan successfully.
a quick flicker of those horrible, faintly glowing yellow eyes over Harry's shoulder is enough to signal the human who is so clearly not Kim at this close a distance. he doesn't need to be 'told' twice, and pelts past both monsters out of the alley.
Norman breathes in, feeling every minute detail of how Harry is struggling against him. he savors it, but not in the way the Goblin would have. more in a clinically detached sort of sense, a scientist observing the effects of an experiment: because that's precisely what this is, a hypothesis being tested in a carefully controlled environment. When he speaks, his voice is calm, level.]
I'll ask you one more time. Which of your voices encourages these righteous murders of yours?
Edited (formatting, why am I so picky about you) 2022-12-19 04:27 (UTC)
HALF LIGHT - (What did you think was going to happen? How many bodies have we fished out of alleys like this? You know what happens here.)
This is the second time he’s been poisoned and it still really fucking hurts. It’s all in him so fast, burning through his body. He twitches and screams, trapped in Norman's fucked up many limbed embrace. He’s not thinking. In his dumb animal panic, he actually screams for Kim. Like somewhere he’d hear him. When it reaches his ears the loneliest sound he’s heard and-
REACTION SPEED - (Wait what are you doing? What’s that inhale for-)
“Half Light-”
HALF LIGHT - (Don’t say my name- don’t fucking say *anything!* Stop!)
VOLITION - (We aren’t in control anymore. I can’t stop him. Executive function. Everything. It's all shot.)
INTERFACING - (I can’t reset him. I can’t pull the plug. I can’t do anything anymore.)
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - (This is bullshit! This is *fucking* bullshit. No one can just make us talk!)
"That many?!" The disgust and shock is plain in his voice, even if Harry can't see the way his eyes widen and his mouth twists. It can't be, he thinks. Everyone has something redeemable in them. If he stops believing that - the lesson May taught him at such a tremendous cost - he may as well give up. He's seen from Harry's memory play that there are things he cares about, people he cared for. There's got to be a way out of this hell for him. Norman remembers the task at hand, shoves down the knee-jerk reaction, and breathes in through his nose.
EMPATHY - (Disgust. He didn’t like that answer. He’s upset.)
Hedoesn’t understand what that means, he doesn’t understand what Norman wants. He struggles to speak. His voice is badly slurred as he fights against the pain and the tears and the poison. His body is against him. It doesn’t want to be. But it is.
“They all…help me…”
Except now they can’t.
VOLITION - (We're trying.)
ENDURANCE - (It’s the poison. It’s everywhere in you. Your limbs are heavy. You can taste it in your gums.)
INTERFACING - (It saturates your tissues. Nothing is responding right.)
"Damn it," Norman hisses under his breath. It's no matter if Harry hears him swear: the poison's doing its work, as he knew it would, but now he has no idea how to gauge if his hypothesis will have worked. He watches Harry's eyes, the way they seem to have trouble focusing. He knows from his own studies that his venom is mainly neurotoxins, so he's expecting sensory interference and paralysis. Harry can speak now, can hear him, but who knows how much longer that will last?
He can only hope that one of those many skills dies with the harpy - that maybe when Harry resurrects, he'll be a bit less beholden to the voices in his head. It isn't the solution he'd hoped for, but maybe small progress is better than none.
cw: references to child death/suicide ideation, Harry typical sexual dysfunction/references
CONCEPTUALIZATION - (Life is an endless unfolding. You constantly find new things to surpass your expectations of fear. Borders are redrawn. Boundaries are renegotiated between all of us. We talk to each other while you sleep. We know it will get worse.)
HALF LIGHT - (No one will save us.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (He's gone.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (We aren’t safe inside your head, we’ve never been safe. It was stupid for any of us to think otherwise.)
VOLITION - (Trapped inside your endlessly rotting corpse for 45 years. Swelling and festering into childhood, then adulthood.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Eight handprints on a wall. You should’ve died with your tribe but you made us all live instead. One by one they died and you lingered. What were you trying to prove?)
HALF LIGHT - (I hate dying! I hate being touched! I just want to go home! There is a safe place! I know there is! If we run and fight and fuck hard enough we can get there!)
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (He fucked you somewhere around here. Maybe in this same alley. You took his cock like a real champion-bitch.)
Harry is distantly aware that his stupid dick is reacting to all of this- the adrenaline, being touched, Norman's voice. Figures. He can’t get it up when he wants. But now he’s getting hard. He makes a rough despairing noise, frustrated and petulant.
“I'm so fucked up…what’s wrong with me…? Why am I like this? It’s…not normal…”
finally closing this off, sorry, thought I already did!
So many of them?! Norman recoils a bit in disgust and anger. Even as Harry admits to his sorry state, aroused and dying and wrecked, Norman's mind is beginning to spiral, hard and fast.
I'd thought it would just be one. ONE! And that killing him could make it go away ... but now he's just going to die ... and even if one does go ... there's so many more ... how many times would I have to - to - no one is SAFE with him around! This lunatic, this - this -
"Monster."
Norman snarls, but as he lunges forward and swipes out with his claws to slash Harry's throat open, he's lost in his own mind, his own hatred and pain. He's lashing out at a mirror, a large pierglass twice the size of a door, and there are as many reflections of himself as the voices Harry's named. He's hoping to shatter every single one, just as surely as he obliterated the Goblin. To end it, so he doesn't have to be reminded that any of it happened at all. To free Harry, and in doing so, free himself.
To his great dismay, only one of them gushes blood and drops to the ground.
But he doesn’t. Not even slowly. He is not dying. His lungs are filling with blood. And he is not dying.
He scrambles on the ground. He can’t scream. He can’t breathe.
He is trying to crawl away- back into the warmth of Bavan's streetlights. Out of this alley where people fuck and kill each other. Towards help maybe- but mostly away from Norman and the blood, all the blood on his hands, pouring out of his mouth.
He remembers the Perikarnassian, sexless and dripping molten gold from their mouth. Endless gold. Did it hurt? Did it hurt like this?
[Norman knows the tiers well enough by now that his panic only lasts a moment before the predatory arachne logic kicks in and grafts itself to his decades of biological study. Harry must have pledged enough of himself to that insidious Fog that he can only be killed in certain ways: Reira had spoken to him about it at length when he had asked about the rankings. Eventually, the gash in Harry's lungs could drown him in his own blood, causing a slow asphyxiation and resulting brain damage ... but it would take ages for the damage to be severe enough to kill. Norman's horrible yellow eyes narrow with a grim calculation, then he breathes in]
It was supposed to be quicker than this. Not that that'll mean a fucking thing.
[he winces, hearing the Goblin jeering at him from the past: "TELL ME HOW!" "The HEART, Osborn!"
unable to do it with his claws - his hands! - he lashes out with a back leg and spears Harry through the heart.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
HALF LIGHT - (This is wrong. You need to move. You need to get out of here.)
LOGIC - (It’s just a human.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (It’s not real. You’re just seeing things again.)
Harry resumes his focus on his ‘no really I’m just chilling here’ vibes. Perching on a bench and sucking down a cigarette with an effect of laziness. He watches the guy out of the corner of his eye. Until he can’t. Until he’s starring openly, head tilted and eyes wide. His feet stand him upright but he doesn’t move. If he looks away or if he gets to close he'll be gone. What will he do then?
Norman, have you ever seen those videos of dogs at the airport, greeting soldiers back from tour? It’s a bit like that. There’s a slight trembling through Harry’s body.
no subject
above that alley, hidden from view behind a stairwell exit, crouches Norman, a strand of silk already attached to the lip of the roof, ready to lower himself down at the opportune moment.
not only can he see Harry trembling, but he can feel the vibrations, and it activates that spider's sense of prey within him. yes. yes. come into the web, you fly, you disgusting little insect. let him help you. coccoon you up in death and let the evil bits slough off in resurrection.
he shakes his head a little, not really liking how hard that prey drive goes, how close it edges to mental territory that he's been trying to fervently stay out of. but the objective remains the same. he can still imagine poor Beat dying at Harry's hands, can still smell the aftermath of the grocery fire, see Fiddleford's reaction to Marco being murdered... and knows it has to stop.]
no subject
He hurries up. If he’s fast enough he can catch her. Before she boards the aerostatic, before she gets to Mirova. Before she puts the entire Pale between them forever.
He turns into the alley and-
It’s not there.
“…Kim?”
no subject
gain what you have lost by losing what you no longer need.
by necessity, the cryptic statement is hard to read from a distance. one has to come far enough into the alley that there's ample space between them and the mouth of it to make it out properly.
Norman holds his breath. And waits.]
no subject
…In the light of day.
PERCEPTION - (It says something. You’ll have to get closer if you want to see it.)
HALF LIGHT - (No. Dont.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (I want to see it. Kim is looking at it.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (You aren’t going to turn tail and leave him in this alley. Dream or not…)
Harry walks forward, squinting against the darkness. When he’s close enough to make out the words…his stomach drops.
HALF LIGHT - (I don’t want to lose anything anymore. I want to leave. I want to go. I want to go.)
He touches Kim’s shoulder.
“Let’s go home.”
REACTION SPEED - (This isn’t right.)
PERCEPTION - (That isn’t Kim.)
HALF LIGHT - (RUN.)
no subject
a quick flicker of those horrible, faintly glowing yellow eyes over Harry's shoulder is enough to signal the human who is so clearly not Kim at this close a distance. he doesn't need to be 'told' twice, and pelts past both monsters out of the alley.
Norman breathes in, feeling every minute detail of how Harry is struggling against him. he savors it, but not in the way the Goblin would have. more in a clinically detached sort of sense, a scientist observing the effects of an experiment: because that's precisely what this is, a hypothesis being tested in a carefully controlled environment. When he speaks, his voice is calm, level.]
I'll ask you one more time. Which of your voices encourages these righteous murders of yours?
no subject
This is the second time he’s been poisoned and it still really fucking hurts. It’s all in him so fast, burning through his body. He twitches and screams, trapped in Norman's fucked up many limbed embrace. He’s not thinking. In his dumb animal panic, he actually screams for Kim. Like somewhere he’d hear him. When it reaches his ears the loneliest sound he’s heard and-
REACTION SPEED - (Wait what are you doing? What’s that inhale for-)
“Half Light-”
HALF LIGHT - (Don’t say my name- don’t fucking say *anything!* Stop!)
VOLITION - (We aren’t in control anymore. I can’t stop him. Executive function. Everything. It's all shot.)
INTERFACING - (I can’t reset him. I can’t pull the plug. I can’t do anything anymore.)
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - (This is bullshit! This is *fucking* bullshit. No one can just make us talk!)
“Inland Empire. Drama. Suggestion. Physical Instrument. Pain Threshold.”
Each name is pulled out of his mind like a tooth from the root. His cheeks are wet. He’s shaking in his boots, in his fear.
“Endurance. Electrochemistry. Authority. Hand/Eye Coordination. Reaction Speed. Interfacing. Rhetoric. Visual Calculus…”
INLAND EMPIRE - (You've been afraid of this for a long time. You just forgot. There was a doctor. He wanted you to talk about us.)
no subject
"The most supportive, then."
no subject
EMPATHY - (Disgust. He didn’t like that answer. He’s upset.)
Hedoesn’t understand what that means, he doesn’t understand what Norman wants. He struggles to speak. His voice is badly slurred as he fights against the pain and the tears and the poison. His body is against him. It doesn’t want to be. But it is.
“They all…help me…”
Except now they can’t.
VOLITION - (We're trying.)
ENDURANCE - (It’s the poison. It’s everywhere in you. Your limbs are heavy. You can taste it in your gums.)
INTERFACING - (It saturates your tissues. Nothing is responding right.)
no subject
He can only hope that one of those many skills dies with the harpy - that maybe when Harry resurrects, he'll be a bit less beholden to the voices in his head. It isn't the solution he'd hoped for, but maybe small progress is better than none.
cw: references to child death/suicide ideation, Harry typical sexual dysfunction/references
CONCEPTUALIZATION - (Life is an endless unfolding. You constantly find new things to surpass your expectations of fear. Borders are redrawn. Boundaries are renegotiated between all of us. We talk to each other while you sleep. We know it will get worse.)
HALF LIGHT - (No one will save us.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (He's gone.)
INLAND EMPIRE - (We aren’t safe inside your head, we’ve never been safe. It was stupid for any of us to think otherwise.)
VOLITION - (Trapped inside your endlessly rotting corpse for 45 years. Swelling and festering into childhood, then adulthood.)
ESPIRIT DE CORPS - (Eight handprints on a wall. You should’ve died with your tribe but you made us all live instead. One by one they died and you lingered. What were you trying to prove?)
HALF LIGHT - (I hate dying! I hate being touched! I just want to go home! There is a safe place! I know there is! If we run and fight and fuck hard enough we can get there!)
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - (He fucked you somewhere around here. Maybe in this same alley. You took his cock like a real champion-bitch.)
Harry is distantly aware that his stupid dick is reacting to all of this- the adrenaline, being touched, Norman's voice. Figures. He can’t get it up when he wants. But now he’s getting hard. He makes a rough despairing noise, frustrated and petulant.
“I'm so fucked up…what’s wrong with me…? Why am I like this? It’s…not normal…”
finally closing this off, sorry, thought I already did!
I'd thought it would just be one. ONE! And that killing him could make it go away ... but now he's just going to die ... and even if one does go ... there's so many more ... how many times would I have to - to - no one is SAFE with him around! This lunatic, this - this -
"Monster."
Norman snarls, but as he lunges forward and swipes out with his claws to slash Harry's throat open, he's lost in his own mind, his own hatred and pain. He's lashing out at a mirror, a large pierglass twice the size of a door, and there are as many reflections of himself as the voices Harry's named. He's hoping to shatter every single one, just as surely as he obliterated the Goblin. To end it, so he doesn't have to be reminded that any of it happened at all. To free Harry, and in doing so, free himself.
To his great dismay, only one of them gushes blood and drops to the ground.
cw: gore
But he doesn’t. Not even slowly. He is not dying. His lungs are filling with blood. And he is not dying.
He scrambles on the ground. He can’t scream. He can’t breathe.
He is trying to crawl away- back into the warmth of Bavan's streetlights. Out of this alley where people fuck and kill each other. Towards help maybe- but mostly away from Norman and the blood, all the blood on his hands, pouring out of his mouth.
He remembers the Perikarnassian, sexless and dripping molten gold from their mouth. Endless gold. Did it hurt? Did it hurt like this?
CW: discussion of brain death/drowning
It was supposed to be quicker than this. Not that that'll mean a fucking thing.
[he winces, hearing the Goblin jeering at him from the past:
"TELL ME HOW!"
"The HEART, Osborn!"
unable to do it with his claws - his hands! - he lashes out with a back leg and spears Harry through the heart.]