TDM #1

[rhodosmods]

TDM #1: AUGUST

Jump to: Arrival · Sound and Light · Into the Fog · Waking Up to a Nightmare · The Bonfire
Summary · Questions

I. ARRIVAL

Upon arrival, characters awaken in one of the main plazas of the town, lying on the paving stones around a central fountain. It is a bright sunny day and very hot, so you'll quickly want to find some shade. A light breeze brings the scent of the sea, but there are no cries of sea birds to be heard.

The buildings of the plaza are all medieval stone construction, but they all have modern awnings and glass fronts. Tables out front display tourist wares: little plastic statuettes, postcards, t-shirts. Among these, it's easy to identify Greek lettering, Greek gods, photos of Athens and Crete. Predominant among the souvenirs are items marked with the name Rhodos.

But there are no vendors selling their wares. Even if characters wander into the shops, they are all empty as if their owners just stepped away for a moment. Lights are on, and some of the larger and nicer shops even have the whirr of air conditioning. Food stands waft the aroma of freshly grilled kebabs, and a gelato cart is cold to the touch and the ice cream inside is frosty and delicious.

The plaza where you arrive is set on a slope, and the direction of the sea breeze and the faint sound of waves against a shore indicates pretty strongly that down-slope is the direction of the sea. But looking down the slope from the main plaza, you can see an open archway in a tall stone wall, and beyond it is nothing but mist. Despite the clear sunny day in the plaza, the mist is a dense fog with barely three feet of visibility. If you enter it, you can see your own arms in front of you, but nothing beyond that. The breeze has gone still and the waves no longer sound so much like waves--the sound is warped through the mist so that it almost sounds like sobbing. After about five minutes of determined walking across what feels like flat ground with no other landmarks, you find yourself back at the archway.

Housing can easily be scavenged. Doors are unlocked and the interiors are clean and welcoming, beds freshly made, as if it is a hotel that's been prepared for you rather than anyone's personal residence. And yet, once you've settled upon a place to live, you start to find little signs that you have lived here all along. The photographs on the wall (which weren't there when you first arrived) depict you and your family and friends, even if you came from a world without photography. Upon arrival, you have only the clothing you are wearing, but within a day the closet begins to fill with familiar outfits from home, and within the first week you may find up to five of your own possessions around your new residence.

Note: Wardrobe is limited to what you can reasonably fit inside a non-walk-in apartment closet, what your character would reasonably wear and possess in canon, or what can be scavenged around town. There are two very small clothing boutiques where you can find most basics and a few cute outfits. For starting possessions two may be weapons or magical items, but you may have an additional three mundane items. All other personal items can only be obtained through regains or events.

II. SOUND AND LIGHT

The first few days in your new home are relatively uneventful. The days are hot and sunny and the nights are warm beneath a dazzling starry sky.

After not quite a week, the noises of a spectacle will lead characters to a small gate in one of the outer walls with steps leading down into the outer moat. The fog surrounding the city walls has drawn back for just this one little area, revealing an open air theater butting up against the castle wall. A path leads away from the theater on either side, but if you walk into the mist on either side you will promptly find yourself walking out of the mist on the opposite side, as if you'd circumnavigated the entire moat in just a few steps. Behind the theater is another high stone wall. Centuries of weathering has added rough footholds and handholds, but it would be a dangerous climb without equipment. Trees grow from the top of the wall, sticking limbs out of the wall of mist and clawing roots into the stones at the top, loosening them so that they're ready to slip at a touch.

The play that is projected onto the wall features shadow puppets, colored lights, and canned soundtrack special effects like the clop of horses hooves or the burst of trumpets. There is no dialogue or narration, so the story can only be roughly pieced together: there is a king and a queen, then a betrayal that leads to the king's murder. Later, the king and the queen appear again, participating in a ritual which seems to involve human sacrifice, a war and a triumphal procession, and then another betrayal and the king is murdered again.

The story repeats three times every night before shutting itself off. The first performance starts at twilight, and each repetition lasts about twenty minutes. Characters who watch it repeatedly will get the sense that it's slightly different each time, but the whole thing is complicated and confusing without any narration or dialogue to provide context, so characters will struggle to pin down how it's different. A slide projector is set up at the top of the amphitheater, with a pair of old speakers on either side of it. If slides are removed from the projector, they show only blank, uncolored plastic. If something is placed in front of the projector light, the scene is projected onto that object. The projector can be turned off, unplugged, or smashed. No matter what is done to it, as soon as no one is actively watching it, it is restored to an undamaged status and resumes playing.

After watching an entire repetition of the performance, some characters may be overcome by a fit of weeping. Tears roll down your cheeks and you can't seem to catch your breath. Despair clutches at your heart, colored by your own personal sorrows, and the weeping can only be stopped by receiving an embrace.

Others may find that the performance inspires them to reminisce. No matter how secretive you might normally be, you find yourself turning to whoever is sitting near you and telling them a story from your past, something that makes you nostalgic or regretful.

III. INTO THE FOG

CONTENT WARNING: Cruelty and violence against (monster) dogs

After the characters have been in Rhodos for about three weeks, a heavy fog rolls into town. Unlike the mist that surrounds the city, the fog smells of smoke. Visibility is reduced to a mere ten or fifteen feet.

The electricity goes out, and shops are no longer replenished. Food may still be scavenged, but the food in shops and restaurants will slowly rot and may run out. Battery operated items will continue to work as long as the batteries still have a charge. Running water inside the houses continues to work, but it is sluggish and smells stale, leaving an unpleasant film on the skin.

While out on the streets of the town, characters will begin to encounter the monster dogs of Rhodos. The sound of a dragging chain precedes them, and then the hazy outline of a dog comes into view. It's walking oddly, however, with a sort of staggering limp, and the sound of the chain is underlaid by a low, feral growl. Furless gray skin peels away in patches to reveal bloody muscle. The heavy iron collar around the neck is studded with long black screws, the ends of which pierce the skin of the neck. Hazy eyes are clouded with decomposition, and yet that doesn't seem to prevent the dog from making its way straight toward you.

The dogs are not very fast, nor very smart. They can be outpaced at a brisk walk, and they will lose track of any character who gets more than twenty feet away or behind a closed door. But they are vicious. If you get within a few feet, they will lunge at you and attempt to bite. If two or three of them manage to corner you in a blind alley, you could be in real trouble.

In addition to the dogs, characters will begin to catch glimpses of Manifestations, both their own or those of others. At first you might just catch a glimpse of them through a break in the fog, but after a day or two they can be spotted standing outside of apartment windows and staring in. In either case, they will not approach or attack characters unless you're foolish enough to get within six feet of them. Then, they will attack, and they will pursue at a fast walk until they lose track of you in the fog.

IV. WAKING UP TO A NIGHTMARE

CONTENT WARNING: Blood imagery

On the 28th, characters are awakened by the sound of their front doors being smashed in. It's your own smashing door that awakens you, but you can hear more distant sounds of destruction from the other apartments nearby.

As you scramble out of your bed, you find that the homey, quilted bedding has been soaked through with blood, and it's sagging in the middle with the outline of a human body. But before you have a chance to properly react to that horror, your Manifestation is coming through your bedroom door — more than one of them, if you were sharing that bed with anyone.

You will have to fight or dodge in order to get out of the room. Your Manifestation is out for your blood. You can do damage to it, creating deep wounds and heavy bruises, causing it to stagger and slow for a moment, but no matter how much damage you do it keeps coming for you. Sooner or later, you will need to run.

When you make it out into the streets, you'll find that the entire world has changed. Heavy darkness fills the city, and no stars are visible in the sky. A few lights glow despite the lack of electricity, but they only provide a sickly, red-tinted light. Streets are slick with something that looks like blood, and the stone walls in many places have been transformed into metal or grate. Through the grate, you can catch glimpses of black metal hooks and gory, dripping meat that looks human in origin.

There is no palatable food or water. Anything you have saved has rotted or changed unnaturally into what looks like rotting flesh or lumps of bile. Liquid has turned into blood or black water. The only mercy is that symptoms of hunger, thirst and fatigue stabilize after 24 hours and don't get any worse. Don't worry, it won't be the dehydration that kills you here.

Your Manifestation pursues you tirelessly, and the monster dogs are faster, smarter, and moving in packs. Your home is no longer safe, and staying on the streets is deadly.

V. THE BONFIRE

CONTENT WARNING: Body horror, immolation

Sooner or later, you find your way to the bonfire in the middle of the fountain square. There is no longer water in the fountain. Instead, the whole thing towers with flame, fueled by a viscous black substance in the basin.

A tall man stands by the fountain, gazing into the flames as if he is supervising. His suit is true black, fathomless black, while his skin is a dark red-black like the newly formed crust upon a lava flow. His eyes are black pools reflecting the flames. He takes no interest in any approaching characters, and will not respond to any questions. The only thing that will draw his attention to you is an attempted attack. If you try it, your blow lands, but he doesn't seem to take any damage. His head turns toward you and he considers you for a moment, as if he finds it intriguing that you would attempt such a thing. Then he returns his attention to the fire.

The dogs and the Manifestations will not pursue you into the circle of light cast by the bonfire. You can find a sort of respite here.

Time passes. It feels like days, though there is no way to mark the passage of time. The Dark Figure continues to supervise the bonfire.

At last, your attention is drawn to a sort of commotion approaching down one of the main streets that feeds into the plaza. You hear a rattling of metal, and a sort of gibbering moan. The bonfire illuminates first upon a pale, faceless figure which seems to writhe as it approaches, hovering above the paving stones. As it grows closer, you see that the figure is lashed to a square metal frame and bound with strips of barbed wire. Veiled figures on either side bear it forward, and the Dark Figure turns to watch it approach.

The figure upon the frame has no face and no mouth with which to make its agonized moans, but it continues nonetheless. It has limbs but no hands or feet, each limb ending in smooth stumps.

If no one interferes, the Handmaidens carry the frame forward and place it upon the fire.

The Handmaidens can be attacked, and hurt. They cry out indignantly at any attack, and recoil. They will not fight back, but they also will not be discouraged from their task by anything less than persistent violence.

If the pale figure on the frame is rescued by the player characters, it flails and gibbers helplessly, continuing to moan. If the pale figure is consigned to the flames, it begins to scream, and continues screaming for several minutes until the flame finally overcomes it.

In either situation, you begin to cough. Blood spills from your mouth, dribbling down your chin and spattering upon your clothing. But then the droplets begin to slither into letters, forming words that spell out your deepest guilt, in the words you yourself would use to describe it. No attempt to wipe the words away or cover them will prevent their legibility. The blood shines through whatever covers it, catching the firelight so that those around you can clearly read the words.

The Dark Figure and his Handmaidens made their exit while you were coughing. You are left alone with the other Tourists around you, your guilt, and whatever remains of the pale figure upon the frame.

SUMMARY

Arrival: August 1
Sound and Light: August 5-20
Into the Fog: August 21-27
Waking Up to a Nightmare: August 28-30
The Bonfire: August 31

Welcome to Rhodos! Going forward, events will take place in two parts. The Normal World part of the event posted on the 5th of each month, and it will be a lighter event both in terms of length and thematic content. TDMs will be bi-monthly and will feature an event element or elements for the Normal World which in-game characters may also play with on their own log posts. The sections on Fog and Nightmare worlds for the TDM will generally be the same every month, allowing players to test drive those elements if they'd like, but not including spoilers for the second part of that month's event. The second part of the event will be posted on the 20th of each month, covering events occurring through both the Fog and Nightmare cycles.

Test drive memes are considered game canon.

This won't always be the case, but for the nerds among you who are enjoying this sometimes-accurate tour of Rhodes, all location images in this TDM and housing are accurate to Rhodes.

Lastly, we are in need of mods! We're most in need of help for processing apps and activity. If we aren't able to get some additional mods, we will have to place a cap on applications, and we're hoping we won't have to do that. If you're interested, please send us a message over on the mod contact page. We've gotten the mod volunteers we needed so we should be all clear to proceed without an applications cap. Thank you to everyone who showed interest!

FULL NAVIGATION · SCROLL TO TOP

Comments

[23659]

( quiet quiet quiet loud loud loud: you are my home. where else? but wu yu understands well enough, shivering with the sort of violence only begotten by suppressing a worser reaction. bu chonghua remains so close but the warmth of being held tight contrasts even with the warm air of this seemingly mediterranean outpost. supposing that is what it is; wu yu still isn't sure and hates that as much as he hates his own weakness dragging hands of bone and blood and bad dreams along the damages of his mind as much as his body. that all of it would have killed someone less than himself or less than bu chonghua is true though, and when he feels his hand against his cheek it is the weight of his statement: clear and calm and pointed.

there are many questions, so they need not waste them on what is already known.

the slightest turn of his head allows wu yu to kiss the center of his palm, punctuated with a press of his nose perhaps reminiscent of how a cat deigns to tip proof of teeth with the affection. he inhales deep, out of it enough that he functions somewhat on selfish instinct, the desire to flood his senses as much as he can with that which is bu chonghua. this place around them has not disappeared. the water has not risen again to blind them and swallow them down. and the man who wu yu would kill if he ever meets him again, is nowhere in sight. these three things permit him a touch of time for better or for worse and he aches with it.

he doesn't realize he's closed his eyes until he opens them again, lashes dragging their residual wet against bu chonghua's skin. )

I was.

( his next thought has him lift his head, and when he peers up, he waits a patient moment for the multitudes of bu chonghua to become just one solid form. in another situation, he might have quietly laughed, which would speak more of his love than even the willingness to kill or be killed for this person. for now, his gaze anchors, and in this wu yu is the raft and the sea and the moon in all its phases, casting light that does not belong to him but does not need to. it turns out, finding one's own sun, is not impossible. it turns out, sometimes, if you stop running, you aren't punished.

it turns out: i am lucky.

the blood and dirt in his mouth even says this. )

You don't have to carry me. ( his eyes shift sidelong to check once again that no one is so-far paying more notice to them than anyone else, but he does not feel terribly reassured even after confirming it. the shark's words are the threat only seen in mental periphery, uncatchable and unignorable all at once. he swallows sharp nausea and adds, ) It will...just draw attention.

( he thinks about his life before meeting bu chonghua again and knows he has walked and run with as bad, perhaps worse, has nearly died but not with any mercy in places alone, dark, and reeking of ghosts —

— you must go forward.

wu yu shakes his head to clear it, makes himself dizzier and one of his hands slips to bu chonghua's hip to steady himself. it is not weird for him to think of xie xing. but it feels different than when he ordinarily hears his voice in his head or remembers him in his dreams and nightmares. the shuddering breath could just be the persistence of water in his lungs. the strange smell...his own blood. bu chonghua is here. they will figure this out.

the hand steadying him unconsciously becomes painfully white knuckled. they were already separated once; he'd sooner kill himself and come back from the dead in defiance than let it happen again. )

[distastes]

[ looking at him this way, a pale crescent of stolen moonlight against an equally pale backdrop of stone, it would be easy to mistake wu yu as delicate. his every muscle weaves in a tight defense over bone, and those that shine through do so at such thin angles that his veins show blue through translucent-wet skin — cheek, jaw, collar, wrist. the flutter of his lashes feels heavy, like he would sink under despite their mutual tethers, the familiar lay of hands. it would be easy to think of him in every way that he is not, that he is not under the constant anxieties of being stolen, used, negotiated with. that he is not coveted. that he is not lethal nor perfect. to be standing here whole and alive is a gift, but the searching maw, the teeth of the creatures lurking below, circling in the flood... that fearful instinct holds fast. they are somehow here.

but where is here?

bu chonghua doesn't know either save the clues he's gleaned since awakening in a similar miraculous state given the most immediate previous memories he has. that he doesn't immediately move to assuage wu yu with such knowledge will be apparent to him. exhaling slowly through his nose, bu chonghua sits obedient and square in wu yu's grasp, though the workings of his body are hardly quiet. his mind churns, his lungs are timed strong and steady in his chest. his emotions swell into the cage of his ribs where his heart paces like an animal waiting to be let loose.

better judgment keeps him steady, but old habits die hard.

looking at him a long moment, bu chonghua slides his grip upwards along his cheekbone, fingers clutching over the contour of his ear to grip into the damp strands of hair behind it. leaning in, he presses a long kiss to his opposite brow. ]

I know of other ways to draw attention, Wu Yu.

[ for the circumstance, the words come easily and immodestly. he's being completely serious and yet the gratitude he feels that they are together makes his voice gravelly with emotion. what he means is this: he is going to take you out of here one way or the other and there is likely not a force on heaven or earth that can deter him. ]

If you don't want me to pick you up, we can do it this way.

[ bu chonghua separates from him long enough to turn around and kneel, offering the broad expanse of his back. he glances behind him and waves his hands to draw wu yu forward — perhaps if they'd met much early, again as children or as silly teens with less than the world to lose should they make a single misstep, this would have been something they could have done already.

he gives a choice without really giving a choice. your steed awaits. ]

[23659]

( there is this: the starving animal is seen as weak but it is also often the most dangerous. in some ways, wu yu takes that shape, though less so in recent days nights hours last moments. less. more. the problem of the boy who was a dragon who was a boy before that and now became a young man suffused with years that do not all belong to him, is this: the capacity of his violence, self and otherwise, is only equalled and outstripped by the capacity for his love of this person. he did tell him once; and then he vowed it; and now they are here.

but where is "here"?

they think it not at the same precise moment, but close. staggered heartbeats.

he has the temerity to peer up at bu chonghua and his first suggestion, abruptly the wu yu who walked over, feline in his approach as he leaned in and said to a man who certainly already knew how: should i teach you? smoking or otherwise. it stands, and there is warmth here, not fire but adjacent, the black of the sky and the white trail of a falling star that never stops: i'm sure you do.

dizzy warmth prevails a moment only when chonghua kisses him, and wu yu closes his eyes again — a weakness conceded only to this person by choice.

he finds himself taken off guard more by his next gesture, staring as bu chonghua kneels and beckons him forward. said staring continues a moment longer, and his awareness flits around out of sheer habit: still, no one is stopping to watch or stare. if anything, the more he is able to pay attention, if he sees anyone in the distance, they seem incredibly preoccupied, which he supposes is fair; so too is wu yu. the mystery and the danger inherent in lack of knowledge is all encompassing; or would be, if not for present company.

there are so many questions, but as if in secret collaboration with bu chonghua, wu yu's body reminds him he is human. his legs feel shaky with threat; he sighs and quietly moves forward, lowering himself to cling to the back of the person he would kill for or die for without a second thought. that there exists a crucial flaw in this way of thinking has not yet occurred to him. his scarred arms slip over chonghua's shoulders, and his face presses to the back of his neck, a kiss that is not quite a kiss as he breathes shaky and uneven enough to never be easy. )

This place...

( his vague intention to wait until they are somewhere more secluded is lost in his own disorientation. it is taking all of wu yu's stubbornness and old near feral survival instincts to keep as coherent as he is, struggling to ignore the unnaturally strong presence of blood scent and taste. it might be coming from himself; he knows and yet his senses should be more dulled than this. he cannot help but ask. )

Do you know it?

( asking how they survived seems pointless for the moment, and wu yu is not sure he could accept the answer. there are not many after all, and one of the likelier candidates makes him blindingly nauseous. bu chonghua may feel his body seize, the arms around him tightening and the breath in wu yu's body stopping for a too long moment as he bites back that fear — that they are here by design of the one he thought would at least die with them in that flooded cavern, the air burned out of him in long overdue retribution. )

[distastes]

No, I don't.

[ his words sound calm and succinct in the fading twilight of this idyllic place. there is a certain faint electricity to his skin even through his clothes, the hum of a well-disciplined mind that never stops questioning for the fear of surprise. for the fear of fear itself. allowing wu yu time to settle and grip wherever is most comfortable for him, bu chonghua loops his arms beneath his knees and eases up to a stand. his slender weight seems to be nothing to bear for him in practice, but in feeling there is no weight more profound than his. the act is far from arduous; this is the calmest his heart has felt since he arrived here in this very plaza.

with that, he starts off through the archway that leads out into the streets and more residential areas. bu chonghua is adept at making himself familiar with most spaces he occupies and so his path is controlled, steady, and sure. in the meanwhile, he hones his senses on wu yu. where he is tense, where he trembles, noting these things for when he sets him down next. ]

Based on the architecture, cuisine, and weather, my best guess would be somewhere Mediterranean.

[ for someone with his investigative skills, these things seem to be almost superficially obvious. a conclusion that an initial canvassing would yield. and it's true that there is a tightness at the front of his throat that implicates him: unbloomed frustration.

but more than that, his next guess comes quieter and with more significance. ]

I don't believe that Shark is responsible for this.

[ because he's already guessed where wu yu's mind had immediately gone in the quiet recession of what would have been their aftermath. beaten, but not enough. injured, but not enough. hopeless, but not enough. shark would have sooner destroyed wu yu than let him go free enough to be a threat to him again one day, seeking to control what he could not win against. bu chonghua would have simply been collateral had he loved him any less.

yet there are too many oddities about this place that rise and fall in his awareness like the sighing of the tides he hasn't been able to find. ]

[23659]

( without wherewithal so-far to fully assess himself, it still is not lost on wu yu that coming here he has once again been 'lucky'. will that change if he slips into the dark as much of him aches to do? pushing that thought aside is as forcing wet sand to make a begrudging path or trench in which to pour other possibilities. if not shark, then who? what? is he wrong? have they indeed died in the flood? that the flower who would bloom on the sunlit earth instead of hell's backbone would be the person he met so long ago is not as surprising as one might think.

maybe you flower like the sun.

of all the things wu yu voraciously taught himself, literature was the least of these. one could say he only was able to cover the basics before the luxury of self education fell in lieu of what he was actually conscripted for. while staying — no, living — with bu chonghua, much of his reading has been regarding law and procedure, a little history, and once after one Interesting night, a volume regarding music theory. but perhaps what the poets say is true: love is its own verse, rooting deep and sprawling wide without the need of an academia's eye or pen.

or: the sun speaks for itself.

bu chonghua make walk for a while without wu yu saying anything, but he continues to breathe not quite evenly, holds onto him albeit a little less tightly as they go, leans the cold wet adoration of his profile into the familiar line of bu chonghua's neck and tries to replace the smell of blood and strangeness around them with only this person. how self indulgent he has become; or has he always? shadows and ghosts yet form spindles of dark that cling to agui, now wu yu, as indelible as his scars. by living so long, that in and of itself feels selfish; but then he was told to; commanded and requested and vowed in the dark of the red mountain. sometimes wu yu looks at the deepest scar along his palm and it bleeds in his eyes even if to no one else.

the returner. the traveler. it should have not been him to be the first name.

yet then he would never have met bu chonghua again.

unconsciously, the slack of his arms is reinforced, strong with their lithe muscle and bone only, paled even from blood, like the water took too much of it before they came here. when he finally says something, the fractured sound of it is muddled by how softly he speaks, no need to be loud or even ordinary with his cold mouth to close to bu chonghua's ear. )

—'don't believe'...these words, Bu Chonghua...still.. even...if we don't believe. It could be.

( could be shark. could be someone else. must be.

right?

for a boy raised from he hell fields of red poppies and dead bodies, one would think he would better recognize a nightmare. but even nightmares take time; especially nightmares; especially the worst ones. days. years.

lifetimes.

another shuddered breath is painful. much of the parts of what might have killed him in that mine and even after have been miraculously salvaged though they have no way to 'know' this yet. but not everything. he wonders how long bu chonghua has been here. somehow his guess is not long though he has not asked yet. and wu yu feels guilty that he should come here alone, that he would be made to wait again after so much time chasing; that after promising as they had somehow the world built a lie into his throat, however inadvertent.

the kiss thieved into bu chonghua's skin is probably not comfortable; too chilled, wu yu's lips chapped, even the brush of his nose again quite cold. when he blinks, his eyelashes drag and when he smiles he tucks that away too, apology and vow renewal tipped with the faintest proof of what it is to have not yet completely lost. relief, then. love, then. a boy with another boy's blood in his mouth because that other had to ask terrible things of him: silence in the face of death, fortitude at the edge of aloneness, patience through the fire.

wu yu's consciousness wavers, body going more dead weight, but another blink of his eyes signals that he's still 'there' for now. )

[distastes]

[ it is something that his heart knew first but now his body knows as well. wu yu's worries don't drift in him, soft and sedimentary, waiting to settle at the bottom of his thoughts. exhaustion won't allow it, relief won't allow it. the speckles and motes of a human's simplest compulsion, to survive, won't allow it. a lifetime and bloodshed and heartache rush through him like a black undertow beneath a calm, cool surface. with those two slim arms he would raise his sharpened anxieties like weapons and defend them both from danger if he had to.

yet nothing comes.

a heartbeat suffused by the breadth of his back. seeping warmth. a cool breeze hollowing out the twilight sky, smelling faintly of salt. bu chonghua's footsteps are evenly paced. ]

It's not. [ could has no place here, not for him. any number of things could have happened. the fact is this: they didn't. ] There are a few reasons I think this.

[ lay down your weapons, he thinks. listen to me.

maybe it's not safe. perhaps they will never truly walk a path of safety. but that is the glory of bu chonghua's intellect, that nimble and unforgiving ability to sense and to see. he can never disarm wu yu of his lifetimes of distrust for whatever lies beyond the crux of their bodies and minds — he can only carve out a path on which they may both exist as they are. ]

If Shark were to try and hold you here, he would want you think that this place is normal so as not to agitate you.

[ why promise a paradise only to make it unnerving? shark is a cunning man, his proclivities hinging on control. an animal being forced to live its life in a cage will only become placid if it does not realize it's being held prisoner. in exchange for peace, it will abandon its instinct. bu chonghua's skin heats at the thought — wu yu's weight against him is not that of a creature. in his line of thought, he becomes even more aware of his shape, the contours he has held tight and safe in his arms as if it would shatter him to be apart.

no, bu chonghua does not think of wu yu as an animal.

but shark does. ]

There are no local people. In the time I've been here, there have been no boats at sea or planes in the sky. If there's surveillance, I can't find it. Besides those of us who wake up in the plaza, we're alone.

[ and that dawning realization has been sitting and storming in the pit of his stomach and behind the backs of his eyelids for hours. it still does, in truth, but wu yu helps him focus. despite himself, a sober warmth plays at the back of his throat and on his tongue. it is triumph. ]

Plus, I'm with you. Why not just cut off my left hand and throw it into the sea?

[ he snorts. ]

[23659]

( once, bu chonghua told him that if he spoke, he would believe him; that saying words in that place had power, that they could mean something other than nothing. more than once, bu chonghua has come to stand on his side of things whether in confrontation or secrecy. held on his back, wu yu remembers this as clearly as if it had all happened moments ago even though this is not the case. the ring on his finger glints even in the dark; especially in the dark. wu yu's eyes close and the press of his face to bu chonghua's nape means the drag of his eyelashes is a soft, water laden touch. )

I will never let anyone cut off your hand, left or right.

( this: murmured like an i love you. this: murmured like the sea at its kindest. this: the words of luxury because to speak from a place of protecting that which one cares about versus speaking from a place of employ or siege is more than all the gold or drugs in any world.

this.

wu yu breathes and it hurts but how lucky even that is because it tells him he is alive.

that he thought they would die is the truth. that he is devastated with relief to feel the heartbeat of this person holding him up is also undeniable. that he cannot trust this place even with his words and their self evident proof is a given. if wu yu were to lay down his guards of skepticism in a situation like this, he would go in too many directions, a single spool of thread torn down its center to reveal the impossibly thin warps and wefts that make one tenacious red line. he cannot do it.

what he can do: trust bu chonghua anyway.

he does.

the full bodied shiver runs its course and wu yu's collapsed weight on bu chonghua's back is merely a readjustment of how it already was, the hand with its unobtrusive ring blindly brushing the side of his face. if he were more coherent and less preoccupied with the mystery they find themselves in, wu yu might have used that same hand to turn the face of his ride, might kiss him on the mouth the way he teased with smoke and a few words what feels ages ago. only of course to find out eventually he wouldn't have been teaching him anything.

the quietly forced down swallow still tastes a little too much like blood. wu yu keeps his eyes shut against bu chonghua's skin to tamp down on the nausea and frowns a little at the scent of sea salt that vies for dominance the way a feeling of being lost does. )

...where...where are...going?

( words muddle, mute and soften since he does not lift his head. it's clear that bu chonghua has somewhere in mind, and wu yu would have asked earlier if he'd had a better sense of things to begin with. another soft breath bares its teeth in the form of trembling. he's still too close to drowned, too cold. but the body under him is as warm as a day in the sun. )

[distastes]

[ good, he listened. bu chonghua smiles at the quiet intonation of his intent — love, protection, a breathing latticework of safety that has grown strong and wild between the two of them. there is this and then there is room for nothing or no one more while it mends the minutes lost, the rift in time that they've both fallen through. wu yu may not be able to see it, but the effect it has on his body is like the roll of a wave, soft and soothing. from his angle, he can't hold him in any other way, but with the way his cheek tips against the absent draw of wu yu's fingers, he acts in defiance of the bitter cold, the gaping maw of the monsters in the water.

he doesn't ask him not to question. not to fight. not to trust the instincts rooted in his stomach like claws or an ancient forest through which no light penetrates. only to listen.

bu chonghua's whole body is alight with a thrum that betrays the weight at the bottom of his heart. ]

A place I made for us.

[ as if wu yu not being next to him had never occurred to him once, wet lash and wetter lung, cold fingers set at an agonizing and weakened crawl against dry skin. the rims of his eyes feel hot but his voice smooths against the junctures of how their bodies fit together, a rhythmic lull to guide lovers lost as sea back to shore. ]

It's not far from here.

[ and true to his word, it's a short trip up and incline and away from the sun-baked plaza, down a winding residential road towards a series of housing units. bu chonghua navigates well even though he's been here half a day, through a gate and under an archway, up a series of stone steps to a door that lets in to a much more modest apartment than he's used to, but he enters without a note of dismissal or rejection for it. it is indoors, stocked, and for now —

safe.

a light flips on to motley colors: cream and stone, accents of red and teal. not yet lived in, but not yet unclaimed by bu chonghua either. beneath the warm overhead light he heads for the bathroom, a flick of the switch using his elbow illuminating them both in the mirror. whatever wounds he sustained in the mine are fresh but attended to, lessened by some force he doesn't bring into question right now.

not when he kneels near the toilet, gingerly letting wu yu off of his back. ]

Sit. Let me look at you.

[23659]

( though the distance is not much, wu yu slips in and out of coherency. even in this, those self-same cold fingertips glance at bu chonghua's skin as if in unconscious reassurance: i am here i am here i am still here. at least this time he doe not have to run away from him, not so-far, and that is more than wu yu or agui ever dared ask. what wishes has he made? not many since waiting for the lady who told him about the world beyond the poppy field. not many since holding xie xing's broken body beneath the red mountain. not many since the room where bu chonghua told him to stop talking and wu yu did not listen because he finally had something worthwhile to say. not many.

but if he had one other than to survive together in that flooded cavern, it may have simplified down to this: be with you.

remaining anxieties shaped as the drop of shark's voice yet haunt, but they are functionally set aside, moved to a lesser seat in favor of what is happening right now: this place that is not bu chonghua's nor wu yu's but maybe now is both because they are both here. he blinks, shivers, as if the seemingly mediterranean warmth could not quite penetrate the drowning cold. when bu chonghua lowers him, he makes himself smaller out of habit, leaning back before seamlessly relaxing in the same breath. it is not his intention to sit, but his legs ask it of him so he complies, one thin hand braced on wall or counter, whichever is closest.

a survey with this indoor light and less frenetic distrust as he carried outside, means wu yu has a better look at the captain too. he blinks, the slow brush of his eyelashes leaving one dark crescent on his upper cheek. for all his disorientation, his black gaze is sharp and knowing as he tries to make sense of anything he can see. the gross over simplification is straightforward enough: bu chonghua should be in a much worse state than this. wu yu had tried to not think of it because there was not much life in him left to waste on a worry he could not reform with his own hands; instead he had made him a promise, which in hindsight still feels like the right decision; because it is true, because it is perhaps the truest thing wu yu has ever or will ever do. )

You're...you really are...okay?

( above all, this is his question. there may not even much more for him to say of it, but the hand he reaches out briefly to touch bu chonghua's face is as ardent as the word. it does not linger; wu yu finds the longer he is 'awake' here the less his body wants to be, and it falls softly back to rest at his own side soon enough.

the ghost of the sea in his lungs finds itself kept at bay by something wu yu fails to understand or even clearly identify. adrenaline and bu chonghua keep him present. questions drive a nail into it at an uncomfortable angle. lack of answers does the same. the bathroom they occupy is much nicer than the last, is wu yu's dry thought.

he doesn't realize he's closed his eyes after all, lips parted over soft breaths.

nearly lethal wounds are now manageable, collapsed lung replaced with an overall shortness of breath that as often comes with exhaustion as anything else. open cuts are still a saturated white from being submerged so long, as if they are trying to camouflage with wu yu's old scars. the walk and the warmth outside mean that he is not sopping wet but the damp clings to him, as if reluctant to surrender him to this other fate. yet these wounds carried with him into this place may not be as bad as that time he had to leave the body of xie xing and hide alone on the edge of existence. or is it that bu chonghua is here? that he is not alone?

i made a place for us.

as though he did not question that they would be together. bu chonghua really is too good. and wu yu's mind travels him backwards to a cemetery and a quiet confession that broke his heart to give, because at the time he had said those words in complete recognition of bu chonghua's sunlight and so, his own lightlessness beneath the earth where the sea thieves in at the roots. at the time. )

[distastes]

[ in truth, bu chonghua doesn't need to be at home to be home. he'd realized it quickly and not without its trials — whether in his sleek sky-high apartment or the cold floor of wu yu's room with a single blanket, there is the sense that he is where he belongs so long as wu yu is with him. it could be anywhere, even here: kneeling on the bathroom floor in the glow of the light reflected off stone and porcelain, half-wet and displaced. there are no answers. there is only him.

this is where he needs to be. all other details can be dealt with later. ]

I'm okay. [ the easiest affirmation, free of pretense or obscurity. ] You will be too now that I have you.

[ those same details echo in bu chonghua's mind as if screaming at him: the wounds sustained in the mind being so severe that even the great heave and sigh of the risen water on the peripherals of his foggy thoughts left worry clinging to the very air in his lungs. there had been so much. too much. shots whizzing by, the whisper of blades, bombs whose impacts sent those wintry catacombs into freefall. debris, fire, smoke, snow. so much blood that he'd forgotten his own sense of taste. and finally...

he remembers that last exhausted breath before going under into the pitch black.

bu chonghua reaches out with both hands to hold wu yu's head steady, thumbing the chill from his cheeks. leaning up on his knee, height giving him an advantage when it comes to bridging distances, he captures his lips in a way that betrays his composure. there is such strength in it, such heat that it would seem like he could burst and pour every grace he has into him to ensure that he was kept safe and warm for the rest of his life. then, now, anywhere. here. especially here, in his new and yawning unknown.

in the back of his mind, they have emerged from the water to find an uphill battle, shrouded in fog. dense and mystifying.

but it doesn't matter. ]

I knew you would come.

[ he doesn't need to explain how or why. there isn't an explanation for how much he knows of wu yu, one of the few things bu chonghua doesn't question. each kiss is feverish in its softness, tongue plying chapped lips for the taste of water and blood, the darkness itself.

give these to me — souvenirs for those who have returned. ]

So I waited for you.

[23659]

( the gift of opportunity was never squandered for agui. he read as much as he could, learned indeed as much as he could. for a person whose each breath could be their last, there could be no waste or absence of efficiency once he understood that truth. and it is still true; now with bu chonghua's words a godless prayer pressed into his mouth into his force-fed winter into into into; never out of. bu chonghua takes what wu yu gives him because neither of them would have it any other way, but bu chonghua also gives wu yu what he thought so certainly would never be his to call.

it is an easier to easiest thing to let his lips part, to gasp contrasting heat and brightness back as an echo of love. it is everything.

wu yu once opened his palm to a dream of a world beyond the hell flowers known as poppies, beyond the fields of the dying and the dead. when he thought that place had been lost to him, that hand closed. no one is more surprised or afraid or compelled to find those folded fingers holding onto someone else. the fact of not having been forsaken; the matter of having had to live as if he had been even so; the wonder to think he's breathed his last and find himself sharing one after the other with an individual shaped as close to inevitability as wu yu has ever known.

bu chonghua says 'so i waited for you' and wu yu kisses him a little harder for it. they aren't dead. they aren't safe. they are, at least, alive. they are, at least, together. and, not knowing what waits ahead of them, one might argue it does not matter. the battlement of wu yu is the dragon and bu chonghua is his home at any given moment, location negligible because the heart is a traveler.

he does not need to be told there are monsters; he knows better than most and the way his teeth catch onto bu chonghua's lower lip, the way his shivering fingers clutch life and loyalty into his husband's collar, well. there are only so many ways to say it: i refuse the loss of you.

that he is concerned of their whereabouts is true, that he can do little about it for the first few days will likely also be true; lesser wounds are still wounds, and wu yu will be as bad a patient as ever, consecrated to holding onto bu chonghua like a possessive cat, never quite out of sight even if they aren't touching. he trusts bu chonghua's insight as to this having nothing to do with shark, and yet the lack of answers fosters room for the narrowest percentile in which the acute mind of bu chonghua is wrong. unlikely. but wu yu can't help accounting for every possibility. and though he doesn't say any of it out loud, he thinks bu chonghua knows. he almost always does.

for now, it is enough to ignore the shivering in his lungs and the persisting throbbing of the injuries carried over, in favor of a love that rejects death in all its forms. he doesn't mind pinning it through with the knife of his own heart to make sure of it — the liminal yet often sought intersection of 'you' and 'me'; the place it will always be for the two of them. )