(no subject)

[forourqueen.livejournal.com]

When; January 4th, evening
Rating; R for zombieness
Characters; Asshole rogue (forourqueen) and lady in distress (misterblackbird)
Summary; Gabriel has had enough of the ticking. His solution? Kidnap some company.
Log;

Tick-tock. Tick-tock..

Gabriel had always praised himself in taking the Forsaken motto into his shriveled old heart, but after a week of increasingly louder ticking, 'patience' was wearing thin and 'discipline' was going the same way. This was rather shameful for someone used to a rather sinister amount of terrible things in his everyday existence. Adding to that, he was used to remaining still for weeks in one place and tolerating the endless sobbing and crying from the text subjects of the Apothecaries. But ticking? That apparently got to him.

That was why he had spent a couple of days watching the general population, hidden in the shadows and moving in stealth from place to place while taking a few mental notes about the people living in this 'City'. Not all of them were human, and many of them were beings he had never seen before. The variations were staggering, so he had to make up a list of what he desired in a companion.

They had to be male. Gabriel couldn't stand women crying and whining, and there was just something about them that made him angry. They also had to be human, or at least elven. Gabriel didn't trust any of these other creatures, and he knew the anatomy of elves and humans well enough to know how to knock them out... and get rid of them later.

He was ticking off possible targets on his mental list, following a couple of men around for a while to learn their habits and possible abilities - no need to rush head first into friends or a spell, after all. Soon, he had narrowed it down to just one. A fairly inconspicuous fellow that seemed about average in most ways. He was also traveling alone most of the time, which was why he seemed like a perfect target.

So here Gabriel was, waiting in a quiet and empty area. Shifted into the shadows and invisible for the naked eye, the undead man rolled his daggers between his bony fingers while waiting for his target to pass by. He knew that this man took the way home, so it was only a matter of time.

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[misterblackbird.livejournal.com]

Another day--no curse to speak of, fortunately, but Cain was still obliged to see to his duties at his inherited cafe (no other way to think of it, really, if he wasn't to think of it as his own), which meant that much less time to follow any rumours or whispers he might hear of his missing servant.

That really was getting tedious. He checked the Hall of the Missing at least once a day, on the off chance or on the strange hope that perhaps this time he'd see Riff's face there (again--how many times was this?) amongst those who had departed from the City. But still, no. For good or ill, he was yet in the City, somewhere.

Of course, Cain knew where he was--or at least who had him. The detail of precisely where they were was another matter. He would much rather try and follow any trail that might lead him to that place than deal with the tedium and ordinary details of the cafe. But it was his duty, in a way (perhaps it that sense of duty came out of Uncle Neil's reminders of how the Earl of Hargreaves and head of the Hargreaves House ought to act). So he endured it.

It didn't mean that he walked directly home after, though. He still found time enough to ask what he hoped were the right questions of the right people in the right places. He knew his father well enough to surmise some of what he might be doing. And where he might have been.

Still, there was only so much that one could do in a day. He was tired. If things were as they should have been, Riff would be waiting for him at the opera house, ready to take his coat and bring him a cup of tea. But things were not as they should have been. He ought to be more wary, he ought to think more carefully. He settled his hat a little more surely on his head and kept his cane in hand--a strange sort of comfort there. The opera house wasn't far now and he knew this part of his way home well. He hurried, of course, but not so quickly...