log; complete

[ishiah.livejournal.com]

When; August 24th, 1am
Rating; G
Characters; Robin Goodfellow tehpuck and Ishiah ishiah
Summary; Pompeii is a painful memory.
Log;

The bells of the City's church announced midnight not more than an hour ago, and already the network is bustling with the news that something is rising from the ground, out in the darkest parts of the forest. Ishiah isn't paying it much attention, more concerned with the date blinking at him from the corner of his computer screen, silently translating it between Gregorian and Julian calendars.

24th August
Dies Martis xxiv Augustus, LXXIX

He was in Herculaneum, at the time. As usual, never too far away, never too close. And he's been in enough other places, same day, different century, to know that memory can be triggered anywhere. Even here? (He dials hastily, but the line to Robin's apartment rings and rings without answer; eventually the call is cut off into silence). Even here.

He takes a jacket from the stand beside the door and pulls it on as he walks out into the dark.



The phone could ring and ring until the end of the earth, Robin wouldn't know or care. The second he'd heard about the thing carving itself into the structure of the Forest's landscape, he'd been moved by some morbid compulsion to see it for himself. How much did it look like the original-- before the explosion. Afterwards? He'd told himself, no, it wasn't anything he wanted to see, first, but that line of defence gave way, eventually. Only with the pretence-- promised to himself-- that he'd only stay for an hour at most had Robin allowed himself to leave.

Now, trudging through the Forest, Robin listens to the birds. The wildlife is of course more startled in the area where a giant volcanic land mass is asserting itself, and so there is where Robin heads towards.

Some part of his mind counts off the irony-- shouldn't he be heading away from the noise?

Robin trudges onward.



Irony? No, Ishiah is well aware that if there's the distinct possibility of something terrible happening, Robin can only ever be found in two places. Running as far as possible away from the impending disaster, or heading directly in the path of it. He has, he thinks, developed a good instinct for what option the Puck will choose.

So he follows on foot, echoing Robin's footsteps without quite intending to do so, toward the site of the tumult of unsettled earth and drowsy animals fleeing their roosts. Toward the mountain.





Or at the center of the disaster in question. Sometimes, Robin caused it. Not that Pompeii was his fault, not that he blames himself for it, but in other scenarios, the person Robin needs saving from is oft himself. Which may or may not be an unexpected similarity to now.

He's found a place to sit, crouching on high to watch the imitation mountain as it rises from the deep, or wherever it's been summoned from. The last of the birds flee from the disrupted trees, the animals leaving their dens, and it's completed. Maybe it's with fear, or satisfaction, that Robin notes, yes, it does look like the original. Exactly.




Vesuvius as it was, a humpbacked mountain, shorter and less scarred than the one famous today. Ishiah, too, has been back. The slopes of the still active volcano now comprise a national park, its crater and the broken cities beneath have become tourist attractions; the backdrop to a hundred smiling photos.

It's a less fitting memorial to all the dead at its feet than, say, red poppies in flanders fields, but they can't expect anyone to remember.

...It was a blazing August, and the 23rd had made an appropriate day for the festival of Vulcanalia; for Vulcan-who-was-Hephaestus, god of the forge. For months after, the holy would claim he had been dissatisfied. Those who lived by the mountain then never knew, or understood what it housed. Now they people it, tour it in seeming defiance, and in faith that their knowledge will save them.

Ishiah pauses a little way up from Robin's vantage point. This isn't one of the Puck's nightmares, but the reassurances he has against it are much the same. "It isn't real."




Robin's breath catches, surprised and sounding almost pained, at the intrusion. Through all the noises, none of them were intelligible, making a sort of carved silence out of the cacophony, and the death of that startled Robin. He'd been swimming in memories, too, but nothing as impersonal or reflective as Ishiah's.

He remembers smiling faces-- nothing exact, just faces, and they were smiling... at him. Because they loved him. He can't name all the names, but that detail will always stick out.

"I know." The voice is cold and hollow. He doesn't know.




"Beside being out of place, the date and time in our own world differ. None of this is real."

The names and faces Ishiah remembers are fewer, but more closely detailed. He had never had Robin's fondness for humanity, had thought himself too sensible to grow attached to a flickering candle flame. That he chose more to care more carefully.

Careful? Look whose side he's at.

Letting his words trail into silence, Ishiah sits in the dense grass beside Robin, leaning back to look, not at the mountain, but at the stars.




"I said I know."

And Robin does know, to an extent. But knowing and knowing are different, and as he slowly stands to wander aimlessly, with no real direction, around the clearing before the volcano. He doesn't know where he's going, but that's hardly a new trend.

Looking back to Ishiah, he fumbles for words, making an ultimately impotent gesture with his hands before giving up and going back to ambling away.




"I don't know." Ishiah leans back, solid and steady (as he is always supposed to be). "To guess would be to attribute reason to the unreasonable."

Though he has guesses. Beyond the obvious, perverse commemoration - the Titanic farce also springs to mind - theories among the caged of the city as to the reasons behind any curses are rife. But still, only theories and with frustratingly little grounding in fact. The deities themselves, and whatever works behind them, are even more cloistered in enigma. Ishiah has gleaned what he can from the information available, and bristles at how insignificant it is.

"Because they're unmitigated bastards." He sighs, eventually, with no better offering than that. "Remember in your own way. This is a parody."

He doesn't, yet, know how accurate that is.




Robin leans in closer, taking more, as always, grabbing and then ducking under Ishiah's arm. Effectively forcing Ishiah to hold him.

"I don't want to remember." And he doesn't. He wants to remember the good times, not the panic and chaos afterwards, the screams he imagined or the dreams that filled in what few blanks he had. And the things that stuck. Missing them was the most painful, and this... farce, it brings up another painful fact.

That he still does.

"Can we go..." Home. "I'll go." He's back to himself enough to, if unable to make a decision and stick with it, at least try not to beg. "No, I... Ishiah." He's lost not knowing what to say, and so a silent prayer, something that comforts him, is contenting enough. "Ishiah." He can't lean in any closer he's already pressing.




"I know." There have been enough nights that he's watched Robin drinking to forget. Despite their less than congenial terms, those drunken stories, or confessions, had been placed in safe hands and kept close there through the centuries. Ishiah is familiar with the words unspoken.

Nights like these, he can tolerate the Puck rendering himself a drunken idiot. It might even be a plan.

White wings come up to screen the view of the twice-cursed mountain. "Let me take you home." He means his, his apartment over the bar. At the moment the distinction doesn't seem to matter.




"Home. My home is..."

A tangent starts and ends in Robin's head; he sees the words stretched out in front of him, and all he has to do is use them, say whatever he wants. He could hurt Ishiah, he could hurt himself, he could promise platitudes or spin lies, it's all there for the taking. It always had been. It always will be.

And so is the ability to make a choice. As always, he begins down the the easiest downhill road he can see.

"Yes. Home would... I'd appreciate it."