Caught with His Pants Down [Open]

[Jesse Fforde]

The waterworks have absolutely no effect on me. There’s only one woman in my life whose tears make me fret, and even then I don’t indulge them too much. If I indulge Grey’s tears, if I tries to figure them out it’s only because I’m so ******* afraid of losing her that I do whatever’s in my power to make sure her tears are not caused by something I have done that might drive her away. When assured that such is not the case, however, I react to her sulking moods with irritated anger. Especially if she’s got this stupid notion in her head that I don’t quite love her, or that I might leave her. There’s got to be some way that I can assure her that it’s never going to happen. Not in the foreseeable future. Not beyond.

But the creature in front of me is not Grey. The creature in front of me is not even a living one, and though perhaps that does not mean I should discriminate, I can’t help it. There’s something different about wraiths. But regardless, whether she’s wraith or vampire or human or none, her tears make no difference. I do not give pity or sympathy easily. Maybe it means that I’m cold hearted, but it’s not something I can change.

Besides which, perhaps inadvertently her words trigger a bitter reaction in my gut. She is a ghost, like Jordan was. Jordan was taken away from me, to languish in death forever. People talk about the Shadow Realm, but is there anything else? I’ve been down there since to search for him, and I haven’t found him. I can only hope he’s somewhere better, but what if he’s not? What if he’s stuck in darkness somewhere, for eternity? What if he just vanished, never to have exist, as if he never existed in the first place? I don’t want to think about it, and nor do I want to hear anyone lament about how bad the Shadow Realm is. Just in case he is there and wouldn’t allow me to find him.

“No, perhaps you’re right,” I say in response to the wraith’s observation about Jonah’s pettiness.

“Now if you don’t mind, I would like to get out of this bathroom before I am discovered with a dead body,” I says, having made sure that the body in question is nicely propped on the toilet seat and that the door is closed in front of it. Perhaps not to be discovered for a few hours yet.

I turn toward the door and make my exit. If the wraith follows, I’ll be sure not to engage too much in conversation with her while in public – but regardless, I am on my way toward the exit. I don’t need to stick around inside the establishment any more than is necessary.

[Jonah]

Notte had withdrawn in to herself as her thoughts were consumed with the horrors of the Realm for what seemed like an eternity but was encapsulated in the span of a few seconds. The small torture was enough to break her of the weakness she had been exhibiting and the warrior returned as Jesse was exiting the bathroom.

She studied his handiwork. It was efficient, she had to admit that, though she admitted to herself that she should not be surprised. He was of the same faction as the Hammer and so both must be acceptable at what they did. Realizing that she was alone in the small room with a dead body and knowing that she had no purpose there any longer, she moved silently away and tagged along after the other man. Moving close as she had become accustomed to doing with Jonah, she whispered directly in to his ear, "Do you need assistance?"

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse doesn’t know whether the wraith is going to follow him or not. He is prepared for it, however, knowing how he must conduct himself in public so as not to draw attention. He doesn’t want to be remembered as that mad tattooed man talking to himself on the way out the door when the cops come around asking questions about the dead body in the bathrooms. Would they even discover it, or would some unknown, underground clean-up crew come to whisk away all of the evidence?

No, when he hears the ghostly voice of the wraith in his ear, he continues to walk unhindered. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t glance sideways, and doesn’t respond. Not right away. Once out on the sidewalk he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket; he puts one stick between his lips, tucks away the packet, and retrieves a separate lighter. Only after he has lit the cigarette and put the lighter away does he respond to the wraith. And, only then, because there’s no one around to see him talking to thin air.

“No. I have my own ghosty to assist me, if required,” he says, glancing up and sideways quickly, before turning his attention back to the road. He wonders what kind of existence it would be, to live as a wraith, to do another’s bidding.

“You should be asking Jonah if he needs assistance. Where’s he at?” he asks, perhaps a little sharply.

[Jonah]

The sharp tone in the man's voice didn't register to Notte. "You have...someone like me?" The wraith's interactions with others of her kind were limited and had not turned out exceptionally well. Despite this, she still longed for companions that understood her. While Jonah did what he could, he had not been ripped out of time and neither had he spent what felt like an eternity in the cluthces of that realm.

"Is yours...healthy?" She had no other way of asking if the being that Jesse possessed was mentally sound. Notte knew that many like her were permanently damaged as a result of their confinement, even though she did not realize her own bouts with insanity.

The question about Jonah's location finally registered and she frowned. "The Hammer is attending to his businesses and will call on me when he has need. He...gives me many liberties, to learn and understand this world as I am able to. He is a good man."

[Jesse Fforde]

There’s a job to be done, but Jesse has done it, as much as it can be done for now. In order to continue on his quest for **** that he does not yet have use for, he needs to return to the Eyrie – or even to Larch Court – to do some more rituals. Glancing skyward, he wonders whether there’s any use tonight. Maybe he can go for another romp through the sewers – Paladins are more numerous than their dastardly sorcerer cousins.

And so, Jesse moves with purpose, his strides long and sharp – gaze flickering left and right searching for an entrance to the underground. The wraith at his side asks her questions, and Jesse snorts.

It takes just a moment – a flicker of the eyes and a calling forth to the man whom Jesse had summoned from the realm months and months ago. He hadn’t called for anyone specific – just a power that he had wanted to test, to hone, and then there he was. Ichabod, known only as Ichabod. Pissed off and slightly bitter – hardly as forthcoming as this female seems to be.

Jesse doesn’t know Ichabod’s story. All he knows is that the wraith is not happy to be here. He’s not happy to be anywhere. Jesse could of course banish him, but he gets the impression Ichabod hates the Realm more than he hates being some ghost. He wanted death, true death, and was not given it.

Besides which, Jesse likes Ichabod. He’s a comrade from another time with the same kind of couldn’t-give-a-**** attitude.

“What the **** do you want?” the wraith asks. As he shimmers and shifts, flickering like a thing that does not belong in the physical world, one will see a man clad in leathers, high collar, studs. Clothes from another time. Completely out of place, and yet entirely in place.

Jesse, used to the wraith’s attitude at this point, merely grins.

“I want to know, Ich, whether you’re healthy. Are you healthy?” Jesse asks, pausing at a corner. There’s a crowd up ahead, and Jesse’s currently courting two invisible ghosts. Best to stop for a second. The wraith stops, too – he glances between his master, and the other wraith. He gives Notte a once over, before turning a slightly impatient stare at Jesse.

“No. I’m dead, you imbecile. I have no physical body to harbour health. What kind of idiotic question is that?” Ichabod spits. Jesse shrugs and gestures to Notte, arching a brow. Ichabod does the same.

[Ichabod]

[Jonah]

Almost as soon as the other wraith appeared, it had her full attention. She moved close to him, her eyes narrowed as she examined him. He was like her but different. His form wavered and shimmered but it seemed to her as if he did not want to be in this realm, that he fought it, whereas her form faded as the shadows attempted to draw her back to that accursed place.

Without thinking, she brought her hand up close to his face but let it drop as he responded with venomous words. Raising her chin, she looked down her nose at both of them. "We all are not but shadows. Given form by the will of the Goddess. Our minds though," she brought her hand up again and touched her own temple, "they can be broken. Too many I have seen who have lost themselves to darkness."

Frowning, she looked down, her head canted to the side as memories of brothers and sisters in arms that she had found in that place, mindless beasts that she had had to fight off. "Too many."

She came back to herself suddenly and looked at the other wraith. "I am Notte. I do not recognize you. What is your name?"

[Jesse Fforde]

If Ichabod had been a living being, Jesse is quite certain that the two of them would have been great friends. Hell, they’re great friends as it is – Ichabod doesn’t give two shits about Jesse’s past, and Jesse doesn’t give a flying **** about Ichabod’s. They have a mutual, unspoken agreement to never talk about such things. It’s like that for so many things – as if the two men share a single brain. They often share the same thoughts and the same reactions. Jesse and Ichabod glance at each other; they even scoff at the same time.

Jesse, at least, has the decency to rub at his nose to try to hide the reaction, to bow his head and glance over his shoulder; he’s not really avoiding the conversation, but keeping watch. He saunters over to a wall where he leans, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He lights one. The two wraiths can have it out, as far as he cares.

Ichabod’s attention remains upon the fellow wraith, his entire, ghostly body now turned in Notte’s direction. His shoulders are straight, and his eyes, when solid, are piercing.

“It all depends, love. See, some people don’t welcome darkness, and so it snakes into their brains, seething like poisonous gas, to send them insane. It becomes a demon to them, which they try to resist. That only exacerbates the problem. It’s when you accept the darkness, when you welcome it, when you leash that demon rather than try to exorcise it – that’s when you survive,” he says. No, he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be stuck in that Realm, either. He wants blissful nothingness. He wants the heaven that he had been promised, and denied. He has given up on that hope. He’s given up on a lot of things.

“My name is Ichabod. Do you claim to know everyone who has died and come back to life?” he asks.

[Jonah]

"The darkness must be embraced, that much we agree upon, but you always run the risk of letting it take over and losing yourself to it. The risk of becoming a mindless beast..." She trailed off, not looking at either of the men before shaking her head and turning her attention to the other wraith. "Has your darkness ever slipped off of its leash and bit you?"

She smiled at his statement about her claiming to know all who had died, thinking that it was some sort of joke. "I am not so pretentious. I knew many in my time in this realm and I hope one day to find some of them again." Notte thought of her brothers and sisters in arms and how they would fare in this world. Many would struggle as she did, but it would be better than the alternative.

[Jesse Fforde]

The way Ichabod shut down was something that Jesse has seen often. If the wraith were made of shadows, he commanded them well; like the way a day suddenly grows dimmer when storm clouds cross over the sun, it’s the same with Ichabod. The darkness of his thoughts affect his sunny demeanour, such as it is. Not that Ichabod’s demeanour is ever very sunny, but he can be bitterly and sarcastically funny, when he wants to be. He is a man who had wanted to die, truly, without ever having to come back. But he had been cursed to the worst kind of existence – at least in his opinion.

He loathes curious questions. He loathes having to even think about his past. The way in which he continues with his existence is to forget about everything, to forget about the time spent in the Shadow Realm to which, he supposes, his bond to Jesse is preferable. And he doesn’t want to think about what or who put him there. He doesn’t want to think about the bonds he’d created, which are now lost. This Notte might have optimism that she’ll find the people she cares for. Ichabod has no such hope.

It’s as if the wraith himself is a storm, and Jesse knows, just by looking at him, that the female is going to get nothing. Her curiosity is not going to be sated.

“You’ll find me not so philosophically inclined, my lady,” he says with a slight bow and a dark kind of grin on his face. “My darkness and I have a profound relationship that’s not for the ears of others. Respect my silence on the matter, if you will,” he says.