tell me all about your problems

[somebadnews]

WHO: Five, Alina, their guest of honor + OPEN to anyone who wants it feel free to discuss
WHEN: hours after the Unhalad/Anurr conflict while they're busy with the "rescued" (extreme judge-y quotation marks) miners
WHERE: one of the bathing rooms in ye ol' cursed farmhouse
WHAT: Five kidnaps a forest person, Alina joins in and they play 20 questions, Five loses his temper and yadda yadda it's a situation
WARNINGS: here be a hostage, possible violence(??), definite language... less so because Alina wanted to be a good cop so thank her



For someone who spent years (decades) working on an equation to bring him home, Five has surprisingly little patience. He's spent the last few hours pacing the room where he took the old man, his frustration growing by the second since he started to relent to the woman who inserted herself into the situation. Maybe he should feel lucky that it was only one, considering he decided to do this inside the farmhouse, but thankfully the rest of their merry band seemed to be preoccupied. He can't imagine how much slower this could possibly go if word spread to the others.

Alina insists on treating their guest with kindness, coaxing answers from him instead of letting him handle this on his own. It doesn't take long to escape him that he only seems to respond to her. And is that really surprising when he's restrained himself from appearing as the threat he is?

What they manage to pry out of him is deceptively vague, and only reaffirms some of his assumptions. Anurr's followers are essentially a cult of worshippers. They only seem to have hostility towards them because they've taken up residence in this old building, which is what they get for following Haltham. And the wolves and voices terrorizing them are simply the wind.

It's the mocking smirk that finally breaks him.

"Is that all?" His head jerks up from where he's been listening from the other side of the room, and he barks out a laugh as he breaks into a wide, incredulous smile. This asshole. Then he shakes his head and stares at the ceiling, feeling that building frustration boil over.

"This is waste of time," he tells her, pointing as he paces back to the man tied to the chair. It's with restraint that he doesn't grab him by the throat and throttle him right then and there. "He wants to be avenged so badly, let him! I'll grab a sword and we'll give them a reason."

Comments

[sankta]

Alina is learning fast that people in this world can be say everything and nothing in a single breath. It's like getting pieces of a story from many different people in the wrong order. Everyone already assumes you have the last piece, so they continue as if that's sense enough.

It's not.

But what they get is what they get.

Once they've exhausted the man of questions and gotten the answers they're going to get, Alina settles back to let go. The smirk is done with them. It's all that needs to be said to let them know that this is one secret they're barred from. If he even knows the answer. It's always hard to tell.

Five is a step ahead of her, though, and he's already back in front of the man. "Five!" Alina snaps at him harshly. "We're not doing this. We're not spilling any more blood. He answered our questions, now we take him home."

Soon Afterward

[foxable]

Fox hates this. Not in the kind of way that one hates pickles or getting sunburned, but in a deep, utterly soul crushing way. He was furious with everyone, and furious with himself for not being able to do anything about it, for all his high-minded ideals.

It wasn't even a new kind of fury. He'd felt this fury from a very young age, for a very long time. It boiled and bubbled and brewed every so often, but never extinguished. His ideals were a direct 'fuck you' to the injustice that the world imbedded so fully around him.

Most injustices he personally could do very little about. But there was one, at least, that he could address. Right here, right now. Because if Mingyu wouldn't address it, wouldn't apologize, then it was Fox's job. It was Fox's fault in the first place, after all.

He held on to that responsibility deeply.

So it was with a grim determination that he sought out Five, trying to ignore everything else in the house that he clearly had no fucking say in. How could he, when he had no alternatives to offer?

He caught sight of Five emerging from a room, and jogged down the rest of the way down the hall to catch up to him.

"Hey. Five. Are you, uh, are you busy? Could I borrow you for a minute?"