071st metal . voice & zero spam . possible cw for self-harm

[godsays]

[ voice ]

[ Zane's voice is soft, and hoarse. ]

When will someone let me out.

[ action ]

[ He wakes up in Zero in agony. Too many kinds to sort out and identify: raging thirst, the world swimming in front of his eyes, the stabbing pain of every heartbeat, the full-body torture of the death toll, but it's all mixed, all together, and he's moving before he knows it. He grasps for metals, but he's empty, there's nothing, there's no feeling of Allomancy at all.

He falls to the cold ground and goes to the sink, drinking thirstily, and then, with no memory of what happened between, he finds himself at the bars. ] Charles. [ He's calling for help, the cry of an angry and hurt child, and he hits the bars and shakes them, and it's too long before he remembers that he doesn't have a warden anymore. He is a warden.

His mind feels torn to shreds. He wants to hurt things again. The voice grips him.

He curls up, shaking. ]

Comments

[audio]

[tucky]

[... Oh.

Well.

Tiffany seriously considers not replying to this, but she has to know.]

You normal again?

[audio]

[godsays]

Normal.

[audio]

[theresalwayshope]

Zane?

[audio]

[godsays]

Talk louder, or don't talk at all.

[darknessb4me]

Your warden key isn't working?

[Arthas, that's not how the doors in zero work.]

Oh dear...

[godsays]

Don't be stupid.

[strangehistorian]

Zane?

[godsays]

What do you want?

voice

[imfollowinghim]

What makes you think you deserve to be?

voice

[godsays]

I'm not demoted.

[Text]

[americasdirtiest]

how about never

audio 4ever

[godsays]

Next time, don't bring a gun to fight a Mistborn.

[private, voice]

[fridgetothefire]

Later.

[She doesn't even sound mad. Just very tired.]

[private, voice]

[godsays]

When?

[patheticvillain]

[Cassel comes later. Later, after he's slept, after he's worked out what's happened. Everything was so far away under the influence of the Sha, and it's hard - hard to remember what it was like to care about anything that happened on this godforsaken ship.]

[But he comes. He does. He cares. He has to. Because it's Zane, and somehow he feels like this is his fault. That he didn't pay close enough attention. That he didn't love hard enough.]

[He presses his face to the bars, leaning in to look at him like he's an animal in a cage.]

I'm so sorry.

[godsays]

[ He drags himself out of the corner and goes to Cassel blindly. If the bars weren't there, he would have been grasping and grateful, but he just slides to the ground instead, touches Cassel's face like he hadn't seen it before. ]

If you'd come near me, I would have killed you.

[ Gently and kindly and lovingly, he would have killed Cassel. ]

[action]

[themissingpiece]

[Arkin doesn't come visit until much later. He stopped himself from coming sooner. Honestly afraid of what he would do. He only just barely kept himself from killing Dean... he didn't want to know what he'd do with Zane.

When he does show up, he looks pretty shitty... not sleeping much and smoking way too much. Ignoring the possible danger, he leans against the bars.]

Look, if you need somebody to kill, you kill me. Don't...Don't kill the people I care about.

[action]

[godsays]

I knew you'd say that.

[ He'd just known.

He pulls himself away from the cot, and slides down near the bars, back against the wall. The bars are next to him. ]

That's why it was you, first. It wasn't supposed to be Jerry too.

Spam

[walkthedarkpath]

[ Having been in Zero since Saturday morning, Vergil watched the comings and goings happening in zero. He had taken particular interest in watching Zane. He recognized the man who beheaded him in the arena, he also knew him to be Sylvanas' warden but he had never bothered to try and speak to the man before now, he had no intentions of changing that either.]

Spam

[godsays]

Did you go insane?

[ He asks the question into the silence, eventually, after a long time. He's been up and down, moving, pacing, and if he sleeps there have been nightmares. ]

[voice]

[punched_hitler]

Howabout you just sit tight.

[He just sounds... straightforward. Maybe a little tired.]

[voice]

[godsays]

I am.

[ action ]

[youwillgotohell]

[Somehow, she makes herself enter Zero.

Every step crawls along her skin, tracing old wounds like knives. She hates it here, really hates it here. She can't stand feeling helpless, and she can't stand imprisonment, not anymore.

That's why she made herself come. When she sees him beating the Barge, calling for Charles, she sees herself as she was, tears streaking and staining her face, fear overtaking every ounce of sanity and pity. She goes to him before she can think better of it, wrapping her hands around his.]

[ action ]

[godsays]

[ The bars are between them, the gaps too slim for what he wants to do. For the close contact that he, frankly, needs. This is a level of instability he hasn't met in years. It doesn't feel like the malign influence is gone. ]

Morgana. [ Whispering. ] You came.

[orderfromchaos]

[He comes down, briefly - not for Zane, because he's searching for someone and after hitting the usual haunts decided to be methodical, go through the ship bottom to top - and he should keep going, because he isn't letting these things get their hooks in any deeper - but he has to stop, when he sees Zane down there, feels it like an all-over physical ache, a memory of electrocution, the chair, everything.

The sound of Destruction's wings - and laugh - echos for a moment in his ears.

He doesn't remember if they've ever spoken, and it doesn't matter, at all.]

Hey. Can I bring you anything?

[godsays]

No.

[ What he wants can't be brought. What he wants out of him can't be severed. ]

[heisrisen]

[Morgana reminds him. It's not that he's forgotten that he cares - even if he's taking a sabbatical from feeling it, he is aware of his priorities. But without the urgency of love and terror his sense of time dilates terribly. In a century, he will still be utterly himself.

But Zane, his complement in so many ways, is volatile. So he comes, the second or third day, or perhaps the night between them, comes to stand by the bars, a grave calm vigil.]

[godsays]

[ Zane looks up to see who it is, and a horrible dread sinks through him. Something is very, very wrong. The stillness is wrong. ]

Aslan.

[ He knows every inch of his lover. He knows what his breath and his skin should look like. Zane begins to shake. ]

[fridgetothefire]

[She does find the time, when the names from Dillon and Lydia slow, when she has a moment to breathe. She has a few others she wants to make sure are checked, and she wants to sleep for a week - but she promised, so she marches down the stairs, exhausted and battered from fighting the manifested things, powerdrill swapped out for her black ceramic stiletto again, held casually at her side.

It's not really for hurting him, except that it might be, because she doesn't trust him even slightly; but mostly it's because she feels far too much the soldier, now, and she needs it to hold herself steady, an integral component of her balance, a part of her arm.

The warden on duty waves her in after a mumbled explanation, and she collapses into a cross-legged seat outside his cell.]

Hey. Are you coherent enough to move?

[If he's raving or twitching or sneering or seems likely to make any trouble at all, she thinks, she will just come back tomorrow.]

[fireincarnate]

[She doesn't know if it's the right thing, going to him. But she knows that if she doesn't the guilt will gnaw her into pieces, and she's tired of being ruptured.

So she slips inside. She still hates it here, hates being in a cage, but she doesn't let it stumble her.]

Zane? [Soft, tender, aching. She shouldn't have let this happen, she should have been stronger.

She will be, from now on.]