Welcome to Rift, a post-apocalyptic werewolf roleplay set in Point Grey, on the University of British Columbia's campus. We play by liquid time and we're R-rated for the possibility of violence and language. Please have a look through the navigation links to learn more!
Room 403 of Gage was not exactly what you would call prime living, but Joseph had done what he could with it. He'd taken out what had once been the kitchen area (with Scott and Liam's help) to give more space. There was really no need for a kitchen if you couldn't cook anything, was there? He'd also taken out the toilet and the shower, turning that half of his would be bathroom in to a closet. He kept linens and clothes he managed to recover from his old life there. Unlike most of the rooms, Joseph did have a mattress, a queen he'd rescued from the ruins of the house he and Liam once shared in Vancouver. It had no frame, but he kept it made anyhow. Joseph did often sleep in the 'bed', but he also relished his private time. Only two other pieces of furniture occupied his room, a desk and chair that sat beneath the window, and a old looking book case, the contents of which were mostly half worn photograph books from what seemed to be ages ago, an assortment of papers, and a few books. One picture was displayed in an etched silver frame atop his desk. It was one of Liam and Joseph taken probably only a few years after they came to Vancouver in front of the house they had bought, the 'sold' sign still in the yard.
They looked like very different people fumbling through the door. Joseph, obviously quite drunk, hung from Liam's shoulder like a half limp marionette. Liam seemed to be moving like a drunken man, but the look on his face would have said otherwise. Joseph rarely ever drank, and when he did, he was always conscientious of just how much. He had to be someone else's eyes after all... not to mention any alcohol he took in would effect Liam a little. A huffing sigh escaped Joseph as Liam let him drop to the mattress, he couldn't help but laugh a little at the entire situation. Not but hours ago one of Joseph and Liam's best friends happened to walk right over them in a rather compromising position. Joseph and Liam's intimate relationship had been something Joseph desperately tried to keep secret from the rest of the world. The why's of which only he knew, and really weren't important at this point.
What was important was the rather hard face Liam was giving Joseph, and the fact that Joseph couldn't help but do anything but laugh, sending the same image he saw, of Liam looking sternly in his general direction, back at the other male. "I'm sorry," Joseph spoke mentally, not even trying to sign. The one good thing about speaking telepathically was that there was no slur to his speech. It did have a foggy sort of feeling to it though. "I didn't mean to drink so much. Emmi and I got to talking, and you know how she can get me to drink..."
That was really the least he needed to be sorry for tonight, and he knew it.
At the moment though, that was really all he was capable of dealing with. The churning weight in his gut he felt from just up and walking away was far too much to handle, and he let the thought drift away with his giddy drunkenness.
The world was reeling at the edges. The image Joseph projected into Liam's mind was blurred and distorted, casting Liam's mind into a whirling vertigo that made each step heavy and unsteady. When Joseph drank, the way his intoxicated eyes took in the world around him was already fairly warped, but it because his mind couldn't quite focus enough to project the image properly into Liam's mind, it was disfigured even further. What this meant was Liam was better off helping Joseph along in complete blindness. But it took too much of his focus to ignore the wavering image Joseph held in his mind, and so Liam was resigned to carry them both back to Gage with the muddled perception of their surroundings. All the while Liam's expression was furrowed with hard lines of concentration, and evident displeasure deepened the corners of his lips.
It wasn't that Joseph had gotten drunk that was the cause of his discontentment, at least not entirely. The extent the man had let himself achieve was source of disapproval but not what pulled the strings of Liam's patience taut. It was what had pushed Joseph to drink to begin with, and the fact that said evident was grave enough in Joseph's mind to merit a night of steady drinking. And he could say nothing about it. Not while Joseph hung from his shoulder in a swaying, staggering body of dead weight. Nor while the other man was too far gone to find anything but humor in the situation. Liam was near silent the entire tremulous trek to Gage, his mind straining to decipher the warbling images Joseph resurrected for him and his will too exhausted to even attempt to breech conversation.
So it remained even as the two stumbled through the door to Joseph's room. Liam had long since stopped needing to reference the jumbled world splayed across his mind, but he could shut off his mind completely when they reached Joseph's room. He knew every detail. He even knew the exact moment he was facing the desk and the picture that rested atop it. A pang of some elusive sense of remorse struck at him. The picture always prompted obscure reactions. Sometimes, there was nothing but a tender nostalgia to be found, but at other times, such as this moment, it was nothing but a reminder of something that had since been lost. Liam forced his mind away from the photo and the unwarranted memories it lured to the surface as he pulled Joseph to the mattress and surrendered his hold on the man there. Joseph laughed in response.
A sigh overcame Liam when the sight of his own expression flared across his mind, and he passed a hand over his brow, willing patience. Emmi was an entirely new situation he would have to handle in the morning. The girl never should have never been allowed to be introduced to Tequila. But he let that thought go for the moment. There was enough to preoccupy him with the present situation. "I figured you needed time alone." He began, though he paused and added quietly, "after what happened. I knew you had to sort things out in your own head before you could deal with mine again. But I didn’t think drinking yourself into a stupor would—" He stemmed the thought abruptly, drawing a deep, calculated breath into his lungs and releasing it carefully. Now wasn’t the time for discussion. Folding his arms over his chest, he redirected his thoughts with a mental weariness. "You should sleep."
"We look like fools. Grinning, ridiculous fools." Joseph snorted as Liam's mind flickered over the picture he knew set atop Joseph's desk. It was taken about 30 or so years ago. The two of them looked like they were in their early twenties, and they were indeed grinning like fools. The both of them had longer hair then, Joseph's was especially out of order and he wore especially long side burns. They both wore jeans, roughly used and dirty, if the grass stains told correctly. Liam's shirt was printed with a Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon pyramid. He had Joseph in a head lock, as if he'd just given him a noogie Though they were both smiling, Joseph looked as if he were fighting to be released from the hold, his knee pressed against Liam's thigh, pushing away, like he hadn't been a willing participant of the photograph. "I don't even remember who took it."
A foggy memory lulled through his mind as he tried to remember who. That day had been probably one of the happiest of his life, so elated was he to be back home and settled, the details of it were washed away, the emotion of it all was really all he had left.
"I figured you needed time alone."
"I always seem to need time alone." His face drew slack for a moment, as did his mind. "I don't know why you put up with me anymore." He heaved himself upward a moment, snagging the belt loop of Liam's jeans by his fingers. He pulled the other man down towards the mattress they used to share. "What I really need is time alone... with you." Joseph's head drooped, lopsided against Liam's knee. "I hate it here. I hate hiding. I hate hurting you. Right now I'm really hating Scott for doing absolutely nothing wrong, and I'm pretty sure I'll be hating myself tomorrow morning." He laughed again, audibly, it sounded hollow and haunting. He turned his head so that he stared in the photographs direction.
"I dream about it sometimes. Things were difficult back then too but at least we had our own little world. I almost-" He stopped trying convey anything through mental speech at that point. The image of their home wrecked and ruined by looters, half destroyed by God knows what. Such sorrow laced into the image Joseph hid his face. He was not a man who took much value in material things, and their home had not been much of anything... but it had been theirs. Joseph's vision of it's actual destruction was like a final nail in the stone. Their life would never be the same. He'd hidden away his utter defeated emotions and played the optimist.
But Joseph, in reality, was no optimist.
"I'm being over emotional. Remind me not to drink again. I become a puddle of uselessness."
"We were fools." Liam affirmed absently, although a tinge of humor brushed his thoughts. "Grinning, ridiculous, hippie fools." There was a distinct pause as he almost added, "not much has changed", but the gravity of the inaccuracy of the statement reigned it in. So much had changed. The very world begun to disintegrate around them, altering not just where they lived but how. It was impossible to think that they themselves hadn't changed, and absolutely naive to think the very fundamentals of their relationship had been disturbed as well.
"I don't even remember who took it."
Neither did Liam. Of all the minute, unessential details he remembered of that day, who had taken the photograph wasn't one of them. He had the vague notion that it hadn't even been anyone of relevance, just some passerby they had lured over to capture the moment, but he couldn't be certain. His thoughts merged with Joseph's, sharing the same flow of memories and wading in the emotion they left in their wake. Memories were all they had now of that time when it seemed things couldn't reach any greater heights, when each moment as it wandered through memory accompanied a distant shadow of elation.
Even immersed in thought, Liam wasn't surprised to find himself suddenly drawn forward by fingers hooked in the belt loops of his jeans. He complied, descending to his knees on the edge of the mattress, but was caught in place for a moment by Joseph's words. Raw emotion wrenched at his heart, washing without pretense through their bond. Crouched in front of Joseph, he brushed the other man's hair aside before taking his face in his hands. "You know where I stand with this." His thoughts said quietly. "Which means you also know that I can do it. I can keep this up, this hiding, this distance, I can do it for you. But what I can't take is this. I can't have you hurting. Because if you're miserable then... then there's no point."
Liam never saw the point of distancing themselves from each other, from playing off just what they meant to each other for the sake of others. But he did it day after day. He pulled himself away, he kept things to himself, he refrained from so much as touching Joseph in front of others because it was what Joseph asked. It was his way of dealing with the present situation, and Liam would adhere to that. But if Joseph was miserable, if this wasn't making him happy, then everything within Liam screamed to find another way to get through this, one that wouldn't torment the other half of his soul.
As Joseph hid his face against the images of the devastated ruins of their home, Liam laid down beside him, wrapping his arms around Joseph and pulling him tightly against his chest. Sometimes, there were things to be said that couldn't be conveyed with words. Liam knew none he could use now, and he didn't even bother struggling to seek the right ones. Instead, he let formless thought and emotion channel between them, ones that told of his consuming devotion, of his sole drive to make Joseph happy, of the unspoken love neither could put into concrete terms. "Of all the things you become when you drink, useless is far from one of them." He assured, passing a hand gently through Joseph's hair. "Usually, you're quite the opposite." Liam conjured up a small smirk that curled about his lips as he drew up the same memory of South America that Joseph had sent his way before, the one involving whiskey and a humid summer night.
"You'd think, after as many years as it's been, that I'd be over this wall I've built. But I'll be damned if it hasn't gotten higher." He frowned. "I've always been a miserable sod. You didn't pick that up the first year you met me?" He nudged his features against Liam's shoulder as he was drawn in. "Granted, you make me considerably less miserable." He huffed against the other's skin with that thought. Even in his current drunken, foggy state, Joseph could still take comfort in Liam's presence. At this point he didn't even care that someone might have seen the two go in to the room together and the other not come out.
He sure as hell wasn't letting Liam leave tonight, not that he would anyway.
"Of all the things you become when you drink, useless is far from one of them... Usually, you're quite the opposite."
Joseph snorted with humor, despite his morbid mood, as the image he'd drunkenly sent Liam before slid through his mind. "Way to ruin a mood," He joked, pulling his head back enough to look the man in the face. "I don't ever remember being that flexible. I think you're embellishing to make me feel better." His lips finally pulled into a smile. Joseph pressed his nose against Liam's, his hand tracing along the other man's waist line.
"Sleep here tonight... I" He paused, unspoken emotion flooding the channel that kept their souls entwined, "I miss you." His lips settled wearily against Liam's.
"You've never been a miserable sod." Liam snorted dismissively as Joseph burrowed his features into his shoulder. He dipped his chin, resting his lips against the top of Joseph's head, as he continued. "And the only thing I picked up on the first year I met you was that you were someone I never wanted to be without." Even with all the hell Liam had endured in that first year, adjusting not only to life without sight but also to life as a Feros, somehow the beginnings of the relationship that would join them forever had been sown.
He shifted enough to allow Joseph to lift his head, and a genuine smile slipped over his lips. "I don't need to embellish." A gleam of mischievousness flared through his thoughts as he conjured up further details and played them through Joseph's mind. There were still things he wanted to discuss, still things that needed to be addressed. But the mood had plummeted so completely for both of them that Liam was too exhausted to risk returning to that point, at least that night. There would be enough to work through in the morning. And it all could wait until then.
Joseph's nose pressed against his, and Liam inclined his head so that his brow was nestled against the other man's. His hand wandered gently up Joseph's arm and down again, brushing the skin in a whispering caress. The emotion that welled in the bond between them merged faultlessly with Liam's own. "How can you miss me? I never really go anywhere." The attempt at humor was obvious, but in the words and not so much the tone. The truth of the statement was too valid for it to be completely humorous. Liam never really did go anywhere, even when they weren't physically side by side. His own lips molded to Joseph's, and his arms fell to the other man's waist to draw him even closer.
I miss you too.
Quiet conversation trickled between their minds, but weariness was quick to overtake them both. Soon enough sleep came, and Liam's mind receded into the quiet sanctity of dreams and memories.
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| OOC NOTE |
From here on out the thread is going to be a 'flashback'. It starts with Joseph and Liam's first meeting in South America and will continue on through their life together prior to Point Grey. We just couldn't resist.
Something disturbed the boundless void that consumed him. Something pestered him, gnawing at the edges of his conscious, luring him from the absolute black that swathed him. It stirred in his chest, his arms, his face, simmering atop the skin. Some vague notion of feeling that was enough to draw his mind from the brink. His mind began to churn, the cogs of conscious thought clinking into motion, and as it did so the feeling became sharper, more defined. It became pain. A pain that flayed his torn and ravaged flesh, searing in long lances of slow burning agony across his torso and face. His breath knotted in his throat, dammed there by the sudden pain that flared through his newly revived awareness. A grimace of pain contorted his expression, but the motion only aggravated the gashes along his face until a gasp of pain slipped through his clenched teeth.
And that's when he remembered.
He remembered why there was pain. The ravenous fangs of the creature that had attacked him dashed across his mind, and terror seized him.
The muscles in his stomach clenched to send him jolting upright but were crippled by the immediate blaze of pain. A short cry fell from his throat, but Liam grit his teeth against it and forced his eyes open... only to find that he couldn't. Pain and some fabric wound over his eyes prevented them from doing so. Panic charged through his blood, pitching his heart into a frantic rhythm. His hand jolted to his face, and while it was all he could do to bite back the cry that pushed at his throat in response to the pain that tore through his arm, he found the bandage wrapped over his eyes and tore it off. His eyes were open. He knew they were. He even blinked to affirm they were--but pain seared so fervently through his eyes at the motion that his whole body cringed and braced against the agony. An accumulating horror wound through his insides. He couldn't see. He couldn't see.
"HEY!" He shouted, edging himself as much as he could withstand into a sitting position, frantic to gain attention, to get answers, to know what the hell was going on. Horror pulsed so violently through him he couldn't breathe. "HEY!" The cry grated at his raw throat, and his entire torso felt as if it were being ravaged by serrated fangs as he attempted to sit upright. But he couldn't lay there. He couldn't just stay there. He needed to do something. He needed to get up, he needed to find someone, he needed to... Oh god, he needed to see!
It had been Joseph's first year in South America. He'd only recently left his pack in Vancouver to join up with volunteer emergency medical services for different missionary operations in South America. He only looked about 18, but in reality he was in his mid twenties. Joseph had no real medical degree, only a simple bachelor's, but he knew how to sew stitches and that was really what they needed most. He was little more than a nurse when they'd brought the half dead man in from God knew where. Joseph had gained quite a bit of respect for his accurate guesses on just was was going on with a patient simply by glancing at them, but this was only because usually he was able to see what had just happened to them before they'd been brought to the make shift clinic.
With this particular man, all he could sense with his mind's eye was pain and darkness. He was unconscious, and Joseph was only capable of interpreting conscious thought. He was, however, capable of smelling the stench or werewolf that covered the man's entire body. It was a second scent and it didn't take long to put two and two together. Dear God, an unawakened new werewolf in the midst of his clinic. Joseph was going to have to keep an extra close eye on him.
And he had, but the numerous amount of patients kept him busy for the three days the other man had been unconscious. When he had finally awoken Joseph was tending to the stitches of a small child on the next bed. The stranger, who's name they learned was Liam Westcott from the dog tags under his clothes, was flailing about, wripping off his bandages. Joseph immediately dropped the needle, several of his fellow volunteers jumped to restrain the patient. Joseph held back from actually physically touching him just yet, he was too busy shielding the little girl from the burst of activity.
A calm tenor tone seeped into Liam's mind. It was obviously not his own thoughts, but Joseph was careful enough to ease into the intrusion with as little discomfort as possible so he wouldn't cause alarm. "Calm down Liam... You're in a clinic in Venezuela. My name is Joseph. I realize you must be confused, but I'm here to help you. I'm going to put my hand on your shoulder now. If you relax, the other men will back off, and I can see what I can do about those bandages you just ripped off." Joseph stepped in between two assistants, gently placing his hand on Liam's shoulder. "Just focus on my hand and relax. You don't need to speak to me to communicate, just think. I'm going to pretend to give you a tranquilizer now. I'd appreciate it if you would pretend to fall asleep. Don't panic, it's only a placebo." The needle prick was probably only barely noticed compared to all the other pain the man was going through.
"Just relax."
Joseph was doing his best to feel through Liam's panicked mind, dissolving his normal code of conduct for emergency purposes. He needed to know everything Liam did and quickly so he could explain everything. The prevailing image of a monstrous beast was all he could really grasp, that, and pain, and darkness. Joseph had been afraid of that. He doubted Liam's eyesight would ever return.
Hands grabbed at him, pulling him back onto the cot, restraining him. In the up swell of commotion, Liam’s entire body was alight with the instinct to fight back, to revolt against the efforts to contain him, as panic charged rampant through his pulse. But he couldn’t fight back. Every motion tore at his tormented body, engulfing each nerve in withering anguish. Adrenaline had dulled the brunt of the agony, but all his frantic thrashing had thwarted what little raw adrenaline could do to alleviate his awareness of the pain. That more than anything subdued Liam, even as an inexplicable calm infringed on his mind. A calm that was immediately punctured with alarm as a voice invaded his thoughts.
It was all he could do to implement enough calm to refrain from lashing out again. He thrust all his concentration into his ears, sifting through the medley of noises for a physical voice to match the words treading carefully through his thoughts. There was none. The voice had originated in his mind, but that very notion was something that Liam could not begin to fathom. He was hearing things in his mind now. He had lost it. He must have. But as this thought roiled with rousing panic within his stomach, a hand found his shoulder as the voice had promised.
"What the hell is going on?" He demanded aloud, his voice rasping and strained. "What did you do to me? Why can’t I see?"
The fractured rationality scattered within him knew what had happened to his sight and that nothing had been done to it here. The more pressing question was certainly pertaining to the foreign voice meandering through his thoughts, but Liam couldn’t pull his thoughts together enough to manage rationality. Pain, confusion, and terror kept agitating his thoughts into a raging disarray. Incapable of seeing his surroundings, too crippled by pain to react physically, and wound tight with the horror that nothing but blackness met his opened eyes, Liam could do nothing more but attempt to ration out his frantic breathing and gather his chaotic thoughts as best as he could.
Too exhausted mentally to resist or to provide a better alternative, Liam complied enough with the words drifting through his mind to shift his focus to the hand on his shoulder. It gave him something solid to concentrate on if nothing else, something he could be certain of. But then the word tranquilizer struck at his mind. His body tensed, and a warning verged on the brink of his conscious thoughts before the voice assured it was a placebo. The idea still did not sit with him, but before he could object the bite of a needle pierced his skin. Pretend to fall asleep? How the hell could he pretend to do anything? He couldn’t even pretend to be calm. He couldn’t be calm. Especially not with the needle. Especially since he couldn’t see who was around him or what they were doing.
If he had to pretend to be asleep, why couldn’t whoever was in his head pretend to give him the shot? Why did he actually get injected with something? "What was in that?" His thoughts demanded frantically. "What did you do?" His muscles seized with anxiety, enough that he half-rose once again, although he fell back immediately with an anguished groan as pain seared through his torso with the movement.
Joseph hated lying. He especially hated lying telepathically on a first meeting. Unfortunately, with the threat of a rampaging, injured, werewolf teetering on the brink, Joseph had no choice. There had been enough sedative in that shot to put out an elephant, but Joseph knew well that this particular patient, with his newly found strength and will, would probably only mildly react to it.
He could only guess the overwhelming, mixed emotions the poor man was going through. Joseph remembered the first time he heard other people's thoughts in his head, and it was not a very pleasant realization. He'd thought he was going mad. Under this amount of stress Joseph had to assume his patient was thinking the same. "You're not going crazy... my name is Joseph, and I'm a telepath." He eased the man slowly back so that he was fully reclined on the cot.
Liam's eyes were open, but the damage was obviously done. "You were attacked a few nights ago. Someone found you out in the woods half dead. Do you remember anything?" How did someone go about breaking the news to another person about being a werewolf? Joseph really wasn't sure. He decided to hold off on that knowledge for now. Stick to the graspable facts. "There was damage to your retinas." Joseph continued, in a particularly doctorish tone, "I'm not sure, but I think it might be permanent... We'll have to wait a bit more to know for sure."
Joseph nodded the other assisting hands away, passing off the little girl's stitches to another volunteer as he took over the care of Liam. It had been difficult to read the raging man's lips. Typically people who yelled relied less on proper diction, thus making it hard for Joseph to grasp what they were saying. That's when he was glad that Liam fell back on thoughts as he relaxed in to a half conscious doze. "Sorry about that... there might have been a little sedative in there... You were sort of loosing your grip, and I can't have that. There are kids in here." He grabbed a roll of bandages, "You did quite a number on these bandages... so I'm going to replace them, alright? In the mean time... why don't you tell me what a military man is doing no where near a military base?"
It was too much. All of it. The pain seething in a patchwork of gashes and tears all along his flesh, the inconceivable voice wandering through his thoughts, his inability to see his surroundings, and above it all there was the horror that his sight may never return. The latter fear he forcefully muscled to the back of his mind, too unwilling to foster such a possibility in the present moment. There was enough for his rattled mind to toil through. The voice in his head trying to convince him that he was not, in fact, crazy was one such mental adversity.
"You tell me you're a telepath," his thoughts responded slowly, treading carefully and pointedly over the words, "and I'm supposed to believe I'm not going crazy? A telepath." He stressed. "That sort of thing isn't possible." To embellish the thought, Liam shook his head, although he immediately winced and ceased the gesture before he could complete it. His brow gathered in response to the pain and the notion of someone else speaking to him in his head, but even that slight expression provoked further aggravation from the cuts on his face. "You can't be in my head. There's something wrong with my hearing, isn't there? Either that or I’m imagining you. I never thought I could be that creative…"
He stopped himself. Rambling. He was rambling now. Shaking himself mentally, Liam resigned himself to the fact that he would stop speaking to his own thoughts and would talk verbally, but it immediately occurred to him that no one was speaking aloud. Unless there was really something wrong with his hearing… but that couldn’t be. He could hear the clutter and tussle of activity around him, from the murmur of near by voices to the muffled shuffle of footfalls passing around him. Then how the hell was he carrying on a conversation with someone in his head? Especially when this voice was followed by actions that complied exactly with what the voice had said they were going to do.
The question of whether he remembered anything diverted his focus momentarily. "Being attacked." He answered quietly, as if working himself through the details rather than retelling to someone else. "I… I couldn't really tell what it was. I thought it was a wolf but they don't get that big…" His thoughts trailed off as his final waking memories scrolled across his mind. What he could see of the beast in the dark, the most prominent features, its eyes, its fangs, and even its claws, glaring from the gloom.
And then the subject shifted, hauling his thoughts back to the impending reality of his sight. "Permanent?" He echoed, the thought hollow as trepidation swept his mind clear. "No." He moaned aloud, raising a hand to his brow despite the searing objection from his wounds. "No no no no no no."
Suddenly the effort it took to hold up his arm was too much as a sudden fatigue overtook his mind. All at once Liam’s mind snapped back to the shot he had been given, although he couldn't decipher whether there was actually something creeping through his system or if it was simply his suspicions resurrecting the effects of some phantom drug. Either way, the fringes of his mind had begun to blur and distort as drowsiness gnawed at him, and the fact that it did sent a trill of distress through veins. It was around that time that the voice in his head opted to apologize and profess that there might have been something in that shot after all.
"Might have been?" He mumbled, aloud once more. "You drugged me." A humorless, disdainful smile struggled at the corner of his lips as he chastised himself mentally. He should have expected that. He should have known that he would be the moment he jolted up and started raving. Not that he regretted doing so. He would still be attempting to rise if the previous efforts to do so hadn’t taken so much out of him. He couldn’t stay there. He didn’t even know where there was. And now the people there were drugging him and telling him it was a placebo. "You're not starting us off on the best foot here." Liam claimed through his thoughts, mentally shaking himself roughly to combat the encroaching lethargy.
"In the mean time... why don't you tell me what a military man is doing no where near a military base?"
"If we're going to be interrogating each other, mind if I ask something first?" Liam responded drowsily. He paused to grapple once more with infringing effects of the drugs. Mentally caching away a note to give this Joseph hell when he was coherent again, Liam refocused his thoughts on the present situation. "Where I am?"
Had Joseph been a lesser man, he would have laughed. If Liam couldn't believe in telepaths he was about to be thrown the biggest curve ball of his life. "You aren't imagining me. I'm in your head because it's currently my only means of communication. I'd ask if you knew sign language... but at the moment that wouldn't be very helpful would it? By the way..." He paused, gently taking his hands on either side of Liam's face and gently insisting he turn his head a little more towards his side of the cot, "If I can't see your mouth I'm not going to know what you're saying." Joseph began to re-bandage Liam's head, "So please, if you're going to insist to sound like you're talking to yourself, at least face this direction."
Joseph had to remind himself to use a little patience, especially when he saw the thoughts that leaked from his patient's mind. He sighed, audibly this time. How on earth was he going to explain what it was that may have changed his life permanently in more than one way? "It wasn't a wolf." Joseph spoke matter-of-factly in the other man's head, "It was something else entirely. But I'm not quite sure your ready to hear about all that just yet. I think you should first just get used to the idea that I'm a telepath, not some figment of your imagination." There was just the slightest lilt of humor at the end of that statement.
Joseph gently pulled Liam's hands away from his brow, "I know that's not something you can imagine right now." He had more sympathy for the man than he knew. "We don't know anything for sure yet, but I think it's proper for you to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Living without one of your senses isn't the nightmare you might think it is. And there's always other ways to make up for it."
"You drugged me."
"Like I mentioned earlier... there are children in this clinic, and the last thing I need is a thrashing, flailing man about. And usually, when I have to invade someone's mind without there permission, it isn't taken very well. I didn't quite know what to expect with you. But considering you still seem to be a bit of a stubborn mule, I'd say you weren't drugged enough to really cause you much difficulty." He finished the bandaging and sat down on a stool next to the cot. It had been a very long day, and Joseph was rather exhausted.
"Where I am?"
"Venezuela," Joseph replied, "I'm apart of a volunteer medical unit that assists the indigenous villages here." He suddenly had an idea of how to help Liam visualize where he was as well as prove he was a telepath. "If you'd like, I could project some images in to your mind. It would be a little like you were looking through my eyes. It might be a bit disorientating, but it's better than nothing."
Perplexity ruffled Liam's thoughts, ridging his forehead with shallow creases of curiosity, as Joseph established telepathy as his only present means of communication. The hands on either side of his face, however gentle, cast a jolt of surprise down his spine as Joseph guided Liam's face in his direction. Yet he didn't resist, his mind too fastened on the new development that had just unfurled before him. "You're deaf." Although the words were flagged with questioning, they were presented more as a realization than an actual inquiry. He brushed the thought aside for the moment, too entangled in the relentless clutches of the enigma fixated to the prospect of mental communication. "How are doing this? How are you a... telepath?"
Movement began to fuss around his face, the coarse bandages collapsing delicately over his eyes as Joseph began to replace the dressings that Liam had mangled in a waking panic. An accumulating unease kneaded his chest, fiddling with his heart between anxious hands. Something about the bandages adhered around his eyes felt suffocating, condemning. His fingers furled in on themselves, tucking into loose fists at his sides. His focus clung to the words idling through his thoughts, rooting for a distraction. It wasn't hard to acquire one.
"It wasn't a wolf."
The simple declaration abolished the foundation of Liam's thoughts, sending them plummeting to the bottom of his skull. So much behind four words. So much so that a trill of foreboding wound down Liam's spine. What had it been, then? And how would this man know? "I'm not ready to--?" The thought fumbled over itself, snagged helplessly by the implications reeling through his mind. "To hear about what? What was it then, and how the hell would you know what it was?"
Even riled, it had become a subconscious compliance for Liam to speak through his mind. The anxiety careening through his insides portended an agitated vexation, so that Liam was once more pestered by the temptation to rise and physically address the problem at hand. The ebbing drowsiness nagging at his mind forgotten, Liam focused on smothering and smoothing out the abrupt flare of uneasy aggression. It wouldn't do to physically overreact, not when his body was mangled and his eyesight devastated, perhaps even indefinitely...
No. He wouldn't confront that possibility again. Not now. Not yet.
"But considering you still seem to be a bit of a stubborn mule, I'd say you weren't drugged enough to really cause you much difficulty."
He snorted indignantly. "Imagine getting attacked by something in the night, waking up blind, having no idea where you are or who you're with, and tell me how agreeable you would be." There was no animosity darkening the thought, merely a drab sort of matter-of-fact way about it. He let the matter slink from his conscious as Joseph turned to the question about his whereabouts. But even that was eclipsed by another abrupt twist.
"If you'd like, I could project some images in to your mind. It would be a little like you were looking through my eyes..."
For a moment, Liam's mind was vacant of even his own thoughts. Dueling reactions conflicted within him, whether to confront the proposition with his formerly portrayed cynicism or to just play along and surrender himself to the flow of things. Too weary to muster up enough energy for the former, Liam chose the latter. "Go for it." He answered halfheartedly.
Funnily enough, Joseph rarely saw anyone say the term deaf. He always got 'different', like they were skating around the topic. The big pink elephant in the middle of the room that everyone pretended just wasn't there. It actually caught him a little off guard. "Well yes," He responded, humor lacing his thoughts, "I suppose I am." Pleased that Liam was beginning to 'see' things his way, he released Liam's head and began examining what had healed and making sure everything was clean. He stopped again when he was asked how he was a telepath.
"Well..." Joseph tread the subject carefully. How was he supposed to explain everything without completely throwing Liam in to shock? Maybe he wasn't giving the soldier enough credit. After all, he'd taken everything else in stride. He'd begun to trust that he wasn't going crazy from hearing a voice inside his head. Then again, believing a voice in your head was one thing... believing the voice in your head when he tells you your a werewolf was another. "First things first..."
Joseph wasn't exactly used to projecting images. As a child he communicated with his mother in mental speech, but even that was limited. She'd never been a fan of that sort of communication. It wasn't until Joseph had met up with the Kahlite's that he'd really been able to experiment with his gift... and he was admittedly a little out of practice from being away from aware individuals for an extended amount of time. "My apologies if this is a little bumpy..."
Hearing a voice inside your head was one thing, images displayed through your mind's eye was something completely different. It was an experience that one couldn't describe well in words. What flickered through Liam's mind was hard to gather at first, like a movie reel sputtering through it's film with a broken light. Eventually though, the image was more consistent. A mess of a hut, old cots strewn about and the bare medical necessities. It wasn't exactly a picture of reassurance for someone brutally attacked and being treated, but it was still a picture, which was more that Liam had been getting previously. "I know it doesn't look like much... but we're actually quite capable, despite the look of things."
He purposefully didn't look in Liam's direction. He didn't want him to be alarmed, although Joseph did continue to project what he saw in to Liam's head as he answered the rest of his questions. "I guess by now it's pretty apparent that I'm being honest with you... so, keep that in mind as I explain the rest." Joseph took a deep breath. "What attacked you wasn't just a wolf. It was a werewolf... probably one gone a little mad. I know because I can smell it on you. I know because I am one." He paused before continuing with his thought, letting the first part of his confession seep in. "And now, you're one too."
Joseph braced himself for another out lash or a barrage of thoughts about his lunacy.
Had he found the sarcasm to be worth the effort, Liam would have waved a lofty hand in a pardoning gesture.
Maybe he was tempting fate. Maybe he was asking for each and every twist that veered his way in the given circumstance. But what else could he do? How else could he confront hearing voices in his head if not by discrediting the entire idea to salvage an ounce of faith in his sanity? When he had aloofly given the ‘go ahead’ for Joseph to use his telepathy to show their surroundings, it had been with a weary resignation. Why the hell not? Liam would go with it, just as he had gone with the entire telepath notion. But perhaps the only reason Liam had been able to tolerate the idea of someone talking to him mentally was because he still loosely grasped the probability that there was still a rational explanation. Something could have been awry with his hearing, or he could have been delusional and imagining the entire thing. Hell, if it wasn’t for the clarity of the pain, he could have even tried on the thought that he was dreaming.
But there was no justifying this. Something stirred beneath the lax currant of his thoughts, a ghost of something wavering and obscure that nagged at the back of his mind. Ambiguous splotches of color struggled to forefront of his mind, assembling tentatively across his thoughts like a reflection shattered by motion congregating in the now stilling water. The phantoms of color and shape suddenly fashioned into a cohesive mosaic, depicting a disheveled hut within which there was housed a medley of cots, medical supplies, and figures. The perspective was off, angled askew from how he would have seen this same setting from his own eyes. But as he watched one man approach a near by cot in his mind, Liam could hear the scuffle of footsteps that accompanied the man’s visual progress.
Liam forced his eyes closed and reopened them. The image remained resolute, undeterred by the motion. Behind it there was the impression of the indolent black that had consumed his sightless mind previously. There was no explanation for this one, not beyond the unexplainable reality that Joseph was a telepath. Or maybe Liam really had lost his mind entirely.
"You’re capability is kind of the last thing on my mind." Liam answered absently to Joseph’s assurance that they were quite competent despite the substandard look of things. And it truly was. One after another, each new development persisted in suppressing the one before it. So it had been with his potential blindness surpassing the details of where he was, and voices in his head in turn overtaking even his inability to see. And now, even this, this inexplicable vision in his head, was soon to be demolished from his mind completely.
"What attacked you wasn't just a wolf. It was a werewolf... probably one gone a little mad. I know because I can smell it on you. I know because I am one…And now, you're one too."
There was a moment when time fell out of beat, when Liam’s mind tripped, astounded, over what he had just taken in and could do nothing more but lay blank and uncomprehending. And then, Liam laughed. There was little humor to the sound as it seized his shoulders. Rather, it was hollow and scathing as Liam shook his head in disbelief.
"I would have believed you if you said I was attacked by el chupacabra." He quipped with a self-deriding grin. He had actually given in. He had actually accepted the idea that he wasn’t insane and conjuring this situation from some internal lunacy. Now, he was sure he wasn’t. This guy was. The man was trying to tell him he was a werewolf. Not only that, but that Liam was now one too. Telepathy was one thing. Being told he would change with the full moon into something with fur and fangs was quite another. And for Liam, that was the last straw.
"I don’t know if you’re trying to be funny," Liam began as he turned his face back in Joseph’s direction, "or if you just get a sick satisfaction from fucking with my head. But either way cut the act, because I don't know how much more of this I'll be able to stand."
