You're going to take Glabro.
Wednesday, 18 July 2012 16:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flint_garouFind a different way. You're a warrior of Gaia, idiot.
18 July, 2012
The moon is in the waning New (Ragabash) Moon phase (1% full).
Unlike the rest of the country, Washington's version of crippling summer heat is the upper… 60s. That's like, super hot. The rain from earlier in the day has left the park generally abandoned in spite of the pleasant weather. Now that it's let up some, a few errant walkers and joggers have settled along their daily routines. A particularly soggy ragabash is settled on the rim of the fountain itself, a lazy expression on her face as she leafs (with effort) through an equally soaked paperback with several of the pages now clinging to one another. It's a ratty Dean Koontz novel, so no loss, there.
One of the few people in the park still is a familiar enough teenager, skinny and distracted. Flint's less the usual sweatshirt and just in a longsleeve shirt and jeans, all the better against what he still considers cold. Hands are shoved into his pockets, earphones in, the galliard lost enough in his own world as he walks to have not noticed that there's now nearly three inches between where his sleeves end and his hands shove into his pockets. Three inches of white bandaging showing on each arm.
Why the fuck would anyone be reading Dean Koontz? Well, to look like they're reading. Riley's eyes skirt up every so often to keep an eye out for familiar faces or—more often—less familiar faces that look the right kind of sketchy to make her suspicious. Whatever her fondness for this particular spot may be, she seems to be found here more often than not. When she peeks next overtop of that soggy novel, she picks up on a specific passerby that makes her slowly close the book and tuck the entire wet affair into her coat pocket. She frowns, visibly pauses to consider, then rises, moving on an intercept course for the younger garou.
Flint is, more-or-less, meandering along the path, humming to himself along with whatever music he's listening to, but he does notice Riley before he walks straight into her, and pauses when she approaches, a nod of greeting offered. And shoves his hands a little further into his pockets, fidgeting until the sleeves fall more properly.
Riley has been many things since her return to St. Claire, but 'patient' has never ranked too high on that list. She cranes her head briefly to the side, returning the nod of greeting with a slow lift of a brow. She brings a hand up, briefly flicking at her ears. It's the well-recognized 'take out your damn earbuds' sign. She blinks owlishly, settling into a solid, authoritative posture. "…Flint." Really, it's all she says, but her tone is displeased.
Flint shuffles a few steps closer to conversational distance to Riley, and carefully, so carefully, pulls one hand from his pocket to pull his earbuds out, drape them around his neck in the interim, music paused now. And even then, he can't actually keep the sleeve from falling a bit. Lip catches in his lower teeth, and Flint looks up at her, blinking a few times. "Yes, Riley?" And then the teen shoves his hand back in his pockets.
Riley sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slow, casting a glance about to ensure that they're at least temporarily alone in this section of park. "About that shit with … Y'know. Kavi, and Ex and shit." She's frowning, but that's a given. "Don't think I handled that the best." Her lips twitch up into a momentary smirk. "Understatement. But … well. You know. I think we both had her best interests in mind, even if I don't see eye to eye with the methods." She shrugs a shoulder. "…No hard feelings?" She extends a hand.
Flint looks up a bit further, and offers Riley a nod, and a smile. "Of course not. No hard feelings," Flint agrees. There's a moment of hesitation before Flint extends a hand in return, a nearly subconscious fidgeting to pull and keep his sleeve down as he does so.
The motion of the ragabash's hands are well-coordinated, precise, and exceptionally quick. With the hand she'd offered, she squeezes on tightly to Flint's, its partner flitting out to shove the cliath's sleeve up. When the bandaging is quite clearly exposed, Riley's eyes don't have anything resembling a smile left in them. Her grip tightens on his hand, and she turns about, giving his wrist an insistent jerk. "…We're going to a bathroom," She explains, her tone flat, "And you're going to take Glabro, and I'm going to watch those heal. Then you've got two choices—I call Rina, or I call Kavi, because as much as I disagree with your dumb ass all the time, the last fucking thing we need is you stealing a life that doesn't belong to you."
Flint digs his heels in, though he doesn't fight to pull his arm away, just looks down. There is guilt, hurt in his voice, and yet the tone is also detached. "Rina knows," Flint says. "Kavi-rhya knows." There's another pause. "Rina has my knife right now, okay?" And then he starts tugging to try and take his hand back.
Riley bristles immediately, giving the boy's hand a less-than-kind jerk, designed to get his heels dug out. Neither of them is especially beefy, so she's finding it a bit difficult to forcibly move him along. "Then they both have their heads further up their idealistic asses than I gave them credit for. Bathroom. Now."
Flint stumbles forward, and looks at Riley. "It… it isn't, what it looks like, Riley," he says, protest, though it's easy enough to lead him. "Please don't make me shift."
Pack> Flint isn't doing so good at hiding his emotions from the packlink, and there's a flicker of surprise, annoyance, and pain.
Pack> Alexandra says, "Everything okay?"
Harbor Park is large enough that it does have a restroom. They're not the most sanitary things, and various urban legends revolve around the various people spotted having illicit sex in them, doing crack in them, or the several dozens of claimed (and entirely fictional) murders that have happened within them. The truth is, as always, far more mundane. With Flint in tow, Riley starts the walk toward the nearby restroom building, "Unless you're going to tell me you just got mauled by fomori—but only along your wrists—and happened to have a few yards of gauze just chilling in your back pocket, then it's exactly what it fucking looks like, and you don't want these scars."
Pack> Ky echoes Lex's question.
Pack> Flint offers the vague explanation, "Riley's trying to make me shift."
Pack> Ky says, "So shift. From foot to foot. And give him an utterly serious look while you do."
Pack> Flint's mental tone is almost flat. "She specified glabro."
Pack> Ky says, "So make your foot shuffle heavy. Like glabro!"
Flint digs his heels in again before they're halfway to the restroom, entirely distracted for a long moment. "I'll shift later, okay," he asks, half-says, trying to get out of it, again. "I needed. I needed to make everything slow down."
Pack> Flint sends a wave of appreciation, and mild amusement, then. "Heh. Well, Riley is a ragabash too."
Pack> Flint says, "Thanks, you guys. I… I think I'll be okay."
"Yes," Riley says evenly, her teeth exposed, "You absolutely can change later if you fucking feel like it, but right now, you're coming in here with me." Haul, haul, haul. They make it to the restroom and Riley instinctively barrels right into the men's room, slamming the door open hard enough to make it echo. Luckily, no current patrons as she hauls along the other 'Walker. She backs herself against the door to the bathroom and leans against it, lifting a leg against the adjoining wall, effectively creating a barricade with her body for any that might want to enter this particularly seedy Men's Room. "You can make things slow down without mauling yourself."
Pack> Ky says, "We should totally have pie."
Pack> Alexandra says, "I'll bake it, if we do."
Pack> Ky says, "What kind of pie you want, Flint? I'll get the fixings on my food run."
Flint sulks a little bit, and looks at the fostern. "Don't want to shift now," Flint protests, though he moves to lean against the wall. And then he's distracted, looking past Riley and into space. "Mm, pie."
Pack> Flint sounds a little more hopeful than he has so far. "Apple pie?" There's a pause. "You guys rock, you know. Both. Both of you."
Riley squints, glancing out of the corner of her eye and noticing the lock on the door. She mutters, releasing her awkward Riley-Barrier and instead just casually flipping the lock. She clears her throat. "…Hey, so. I don't know if you heard me right, but I'm going to say this very clearly, so that there's no misunderstandings." She moves in close, towering over the younger boy with the benefit of the six-inch height differential. "Take Glabro."
Pack> Flint seems a little more distant from the link, then.
Flint presses himself against the wall, and one hand loops around the opposite arm, squeezing enough to force the cliath to suck in breath from behind his teeth. When he speaks, his tone is nearly begging. "Please don't make me shift, Riley."
Pack> Ky says, "Mmn… Apple pie. Can you make that, Lex?"
Pack> Alexandra says, "I'll make you a list of the ingredients. We could probably do homemade ice cream, too, to go with it."
SLAM. Riley's fist jerks out and reverberates as it bounce off the nearby stall, her nostrils flaring. "…No, Flint. Not again. You've disobeyed more of my orders than I can stand to count. I'm done making requests of you. I am not a difficult man to deal with." She's not a man at all, technically. Her eyes narrow, "I'm done. I am done. So you will take Glabro, and you will undo those bandages while I watch them close."
Pack> Ky actually swoons.
Flint sighs resignation, and just nods, very slowly. He rolls up his sleeves, up past his elbows. Each arm, the bandages go wrist-to-elbow, and then Flint begins undoing them, unwrapping the vetwrap that's around the gauze, pulling off the gauze, almost half-dazed as he does so, breathing slower, more even. And what Riley sees, before Flint shifts up to glabro, is bad. Not a single elbow-to-wrist cut, but several shorter ones lengthwise on each arm, deep, barely starting to heal. None of them are neat, and Flint clenches one hand around the bandages, swells up to glabro. "Yes, Riley," he acknowledges.
Pack> Flint seems, unrelated to the discussion, resigned, but the echo and leak of pain from the galliard abruptly eases, compared to the near-constant trace there's been for most of the day.
Riley sucks in a low breath at the sight. Her scowl remains present right up until the moment that Flint follows through and shifts up. When this happens, she looks… relieved. Closing her eyes a moment, she palms at her face in agitation. The lack of a moon isn't doing wonders for her state of mind, it would seem. She peeks out from behind her fingers, her expression still grave, but… softer. "Why, man? There's no reason for it."
Flint's hand is still clenched around the bandages, a fist now that he's in glabro, and he looks over at Riley, still and quiet as the wounds to his arms heal. "It helps," he repeats, words quiet. "Because w-when nothing else helps, it… it does." The galliard waits for the cuts to heal wholly, before melting back down to his birth form.
She listens carefully to the explanation, even goes so far as to give a brief nod in response, though her expression remains terse. She waits patiently for the wounds to heal, and the instant that Flint eases back down into homid, he's met with a sharp burning sensation on his cheek as the woman's open palm flies by, leaving a rising red mark creeping along his face. She all but hisses at him, "I'm going to tell you what I wish someone had told me when I was your age—get over yourself. The world isn't sunshine and rainbows, but you're alive. If you spend your whole life moaning and whining about how raw of a deal you've gotten, you're going to wake up with no friends, no respect, and at the rate you're going, a permanent mark of shame on your arms to prove your selfishness." She bristles, "That's the truth. You think you're suffering?" SMACK. A matching red mark on his other cheek. "Get over yourself. Others suffered far worse than you have, or—Gaia willing—ever will. You shame them all with your sorrow."
Flint's head turns a little, with the impact, and he tips his head, shows his throat. Mouth opens, then shuts, and he just shakes his head back and forth, then pushes off from the wall. There are, in fact, a few old, pale scars along the boy's arms, things from his past, and he rolls his sleeves back down. "May I go now?" he asks, instead of whatever else he'd had in mind. "Or are. Are you still, going to, to call Kavi or Rina."
This is where Riley should angrily explode, but what crosses over her face instead is something different than the expectation. She takes a step back, rubbing at her opposing arm and closing her eyes. When she opens them again, she doesn't look angry—if anything, the Fostern looks a little hurt. She doesn't wait for him to go. She turns and walks to the door to the restroom, flips the lock off and murmurs, "…Just go." She pulls the door open and steps through it herself, shouldering past a startled-looking man who'd been just about to try to open the door.
Flint sighs for a moment, closes his eyes and draws in a breath, and then leaves the bathroom, shouldering past the same man and then walking after Riley. "Riley," Flint calls out, quietly. "Look, I… it." He waits, though, to catch up with the other Glass Walker before he says anything else.
To her credit, she doesn't just storm on off, though it's clear from her body language that she wants nothing more than to keep on moving. She reins herself in, glancing back over her shoulder as Flint comes walking after. She shoves her hands into her pockets, and stands still, giving the other Glass Walker a tired look, "Yeah?"
Flint takes a breath, approaching to within reaching distance, and then looking up at Riley. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, okay? I… I try, not to make anyone else deal, with that side of things. It helps, but I know that… it hurts everyone else, too. But it makes the world slow down, it makes, things slow down, so that I can move on and do stuff a-and. Be there, when. My packmates need me, when. There's crap that, needs to, be done." There's a pause, another breath, and Flint doesn't look down. In fact, his throat is subtly bared as he talks. "It… you said, there're ways of, making things slow down, without doing that? Except, I… I don't know, I don't know them. That, works. That… takes everything and… it, makes it in a form that I can, concentrate on, and. Then let go of." One hand encircles the opposite wrist where just a little while before, there had been cuts. "So, I'm sorry. I. I didn't, mean, for. That."
He talks. And just keeps on talking, to Riley's surprise. She lifts a hand once he's about midway through, but that doesn't stop him from keeping on, and the Fostern clearly doesn't see the need to silence him. She waits patiently then, until he's said his fill. She gives a small shake of her head, "You got a raw deal. All of us did. If I told you I was perfectly adjusted as a Cliath, I'd be lying through my teeth. I was insufferable." She clears her throat uncomfortably, "But the road you're walking isn't… good." She finishes lamely, shoving her hands back into her pockets, "…Nothing I'm gonna say is gonna help. It's something you get over on your own."
Flint eventually nods, again, and looks away from Riley, for a long moment. And then he hugs her, very briefly, then pulls back away. "I… I'm trying. To do the best I can," he says, quietly.
Looking momentarily taken aback as Flint pushes forward and wraps his arms around her. She doesn't react for a beat, then slowly lifts an arm and gives the kid a brief squeeze, negating his efforts to back away. "…Find a different way. You're a warrior of Gaia, idiot." She leans her head down and gives him a light and painless butt of the head as she releases him. "…You're better than the emo cutters of the world, even if you don't think so right now."
Flint rests his forehead against Riley's shoulder for a moment when she hugs him back, and then swallows, and nods. "I'll… I'll work on that, Riley," he says. "Promise. I promise." There's no mention of in the meantime, no promise of not doing it again until then, just a promise to work on it, pain and guilt and a little, tiny glimmer of hope in the cliath's voice.
Giving a brief nod of her head, Riley murmurs, "Sooner rather than later. Don't let it get worse than it is." She turns and resumes walking away. Then, with a sudden thought, she fishes more deeply into her pocket and sends something flying Flint's way. It's soggy, and a paperback. "Next time you want to feel some pain, just read a Dean Koontz novel. Seriously, there's psychic Golden Retrievers. Shit's ridiculous." Her eyes momentarily brighten, and she waves a hand, then meanders off into the dusk-lit Park.
Flint catches the book before it thumps to the floor, and there's a weak grin. "Seeya, Riley," the teen says, moving over to wander in the direction of the fountain.
18 July, 2012
The moon is in the waning New (Ragabash) Moon phase (1% full).
Unlike the rest of the country, Washington's version of crippling summer heat is the upper… 60s. That's like, super hot. The rain from earlier in the day has left the park generally abandoned in spite of the pleasant weather. Now that it's let up some, a few errant walkers and joggers have settled along their daily routines. A particularly soggy ragabash is settled on the rim of the fountain itself, a lazy expression on her face as she leafs (with effort) through an equally soaked paperback with several of the pages now clinging to one another. It's a ratty Dean Koontz novel, so no loss, there.
One of the few people in the park still is a familiar enough teenager, skinny and distracted. Flint's less the usual sweatshirt and just in a longsleeve shirt and jeans, all the better against what he still considers cold. Hands are shoved into his pockets, earphones in, the galliard lost enough in his own world as he walks to have not noticed that there's now nearly three inches between where his sleeves end and his hands shove into his pockets. Three inches of white bandaging showing on each arm.
Why the fuck would anyone be reading Dean Koontz? Well, to look like they're reading. Riley's eyes skirt up every so often to keep an eye out for familiar faces or—more often—less familiar faces that look the right kind of sketchy to make her suspicious. Whatever her fondness for this particular spot may be, she seems to be found here more often than not. When she peeks next overtop of that soggy novel, she picks up on a specific passerby that makes her slowly close the book and tuck the entire wet affair into her coat pocket. She frowns, visibly pauses to consider, then rises, moving on an intercept course for the younger garou.
Flint is, more-or-less, meandering along the path, humming to himself along with whatever music he's listening to, but he does notice Riley before he walks straight into her, and pauses when she approaches, a nod of greeting offered. And shoves his hands a little further into his pockets, fidgeting until the sleeves fall more properly.
Riley has been many things since her return to St. Claire, but 'patient' has never ranked too high on that list. She cranes her head briefly to the side, returning the nod of greeting with a slow lift of a brow. She brings a hand up, briefly flicking at her ears. It's the well-recognized 'take out your damn earbuds' sign. She blinks owlishly, settling into a solid, authoritative posture. "…Flint." Really, it's all she says, but her tone is displeased.
Flint shuffles a few steps closer to conversational distance to Riley, and carefully, so carefully, pulls one hand from his pocket to pull his earbuds out, drape them around his neck in the interim, music paused now. And even then, he can't actually keep the sleeve from falling a bit. Lip catches in his lower teeth, and Flint looks up at her, blinking a few times. "Yes, Riley?" And then the teen shoves his hand back in his pockets.
Riley sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slow, casting a glance about to ensure that they're at least temporarily alone in this section of park. "About that shit with … Y'know. Kavi, and Ex and shit." She's frowning, but that's a given. "Don't think I handled that the best." Her lips twitch up into a momentary smirk. "Understatement. But … well. You know. I think we both had her best interests in mind, even if I don't see eye to eye with the methods." She shrugs a shoulder. "…No hard feelings?" She extends a hand.
Flint looks up a bit further, and offers Riley a nod, and a smile. "Of course not. No hard feelings," Flint agrees. There's a moment of hesitation before Flint extends a hand in return, a nearly subconscious fidgeting to pull and keep his sleeve down as he does so.
The motion of the ragabash's hands are well-coordinated, precise, and exceptionally quick. With the hand she'd offered, she squeezes on tightly to Flint's, its partner flitting out to shove the cliath's sleeve up. When the bandaging is quite clearly exposed, Riley's eyes don't have anything resembling a smile left in them. Her grip tightens on his hand, and she turns about, giving his wrist an insistent jerk. "…We're going to a bathroom," She explains, her tone flat, "And you're going to take Glabro, and I'm going to watch those heal. Then you've got two choices—I call Rina, or I call Kavi, because as much as I disagree with your dumb ass all the time, the last fucking thing we need is you stealing a life that doesn't belong to you."
Flint digs his heels in, though he doesn't fight to pull his arm away, just looks down. There is guilt, hurt in his voice, and yet the tone is also detached. "Rina knows," Flint says. "Kavi-rhya knows." There's another pause. "Rina has my knife right now, okay?" And then he starts tugging to try and take his hand back.
Riley bristles immediately, giving the boy's hand a less-than-kind jerk, designed to get his heels dug out. Neither of them is especially beefy, so she's finding it a bit difficult to forcibly move him along. "Then they both have their heads further up their idealistic asses than I gave them credit for. Bathroom. Now."
Flint stumbles forward, and looks at Riley. "It… it isn't, what it looks like, Riley," he says, protest, though it's easy enough to lead him. "Please don't make me shift."
Pack> Flint isn't doing so good at hiding his emotions from the packlink, and there's a flicker of surprise, annoyance, and pain.
Pack> Alexandra says, "Everything okay?"
Harbor Park is large enough that it does have a restroom. They're not the most sanitary things, and various urban legends revolve around the various people spotted having illicit sex in them, doing crack in them, or the several dozens of claimed (and entirely fictional) murders that have happened within them. The truth is, as always, far more mundane. With Flint in tow, Riley starts the walk toward the nearby restroom building, "Unless you're going to tell me you just got mauled by fomori—but only along your wrists—and happened to have a few yards of gauze just chilling in your back pocket, then it's exactly what it fucking looks like, and you don't want these scars."
Pack> Ky echoes Lex's question.
Pack> Flint offers the vague explanation, "Riley's trying to make me shift."
Pack> Ky says, "So shift. From foot to foot. And give him an utterly serious look while you do."
Pack> Flint's mental tone is almost flat. "She specified glabro."
Pack> Ky says, "So make your foot shuffle heavy. Like glabro!"
Flint digs his heels in again before they're halfway to the restroom, entirely distracted for a long moment. "I'll shift later, okay," he asks, half-says, trying to get out of it, again. "I needed. I needed to make everything slow down."
Pack> Flint sends a wave of appreciation, and mild amusement, then. "Heh. Well, Riley is a ragabash too."
Pack> Flint says, "Thanks, you guys. I… I think I'll be okay."
"Yes," Riley says evenly, her teeth exposed, "You absolutely can change later if you fucking feel like it, but right now, you're coming in here with me." Haul, haul, haul. They make it to the restroom and Riley instinctively barrels right into the men's room, slamming the door open hard enough to make it echo. Luckily, no current patrons as she hauls along the other 'Walker. She backs herself against the door to the bathroom and leans against it, lifting a leg against the adjoining wall, effectively creating a barricade with her body for any that might want to enter this particularly seedy Men's Room. "You can make things slow down without mauling yourself."
Pack> Ky says, "We should totally have pie."
Pack> Alexandra says, "I'll bake it, if we do."
Pack> Ky says, "What kind of pie you want, Flint? I'll get the fixings on my food run."
Flint sulks a little bit, and looks at the fostern. "Don't want to shift now," Flint protests, though he moves to lean against the wall. And then he's distracted, looking past Riley and into space. "Mm, pie."
Pack> Flint sounds a little more hopeful than he has so far. "Apple pie?" There's a pause. "You guys rock, you know. Both. Both of you."
Riley squints, glancing out of the corner of her eye and noticing the lock on the door. She mutters, releasing her awkward Riley-Barrier and instead just casually flipping the lock. She clears her throat. "…Hey, so. I don't know if you heard me right, but I'm going to say this very clearly, so that there's no misunderstandings." She moves in close, towering over the younger boy with the benefit of the six-inch height differential. "Take Glabro."
Pack> Flint seems a little more distant from the link, then.
Flint presses himself against the wall, and one hand loops around the opposite arm, squeezing enough to force the cliath to suck in breath from behind his teeth. When he speaks, his tone is nearly begging. "Please don't make me shift, Riley."
Pack> Ky says, "Mmn… Apple pie. Can you make that, Lex?"
Pack> Alexandra says, "I'll make you a list of the ingredients. We could probably do homemade ice cream, too, to go with it."
SLAM. Riley's fist jerks out and reverberates as it bounce off the nearby stall, her nostrils flaring. "…No, Flint. Not again. You've disobeyed more of my orders than I can stand to count. I'm done making requests of you. I am not a difficult man to deal with." She's not a man at all, technically. Her eyes narrow, "I'm done. I am done. So you will take Glabro, and you will undo those bandages while I watch them close."
Pack> Ky actually swoons.
Flint sighs resignation, and just nods, very slowly. He rolls up his sleeves, up past his elbows. Each arm, the bandages go wrist-to-elbow, and then Flint begins undoing them, unwrapping the vetwrap that's around the gauze, pulling off the gauze, almost half-dazed as he does so, breathing slower, more even. And what Riley sees, before Flint shifts up to glabro, is bad. Not a single elbow-to-wrist cut, but several shorter ones lengthwise on each arm, deep, barely starting to heal. None of them are neat, and Flint clenches one hand around the bandages, swells up to glabro. "Yes, Riley," he acknowledges.
Pack> Flint seems, unrelated to the discussion, resigned, but the echo and leak of pain from the galliard abruptly eases, compared to the near-constant trace there's been for most of the day.
Riley sucks in a low breath at the sight. Her scowl remains present right up until the moment that Flint follows through and shifts up. When this happens, she looks… relieved. Closing her eyes a moment, she palms at her face in agitation. The lack of a moon isn't doing wonders for her state of mind, it would seem. She peeks out from behind her fingers, her expression still grave, but… softer. "Why, man? There's no reason for it."
Flint's hand is still clenched around the bandages, a fist now that he's in glabro, and he looks over at Riley, still and quiet as the wounds to his arms heal. "It helps," he repeats, words quiet. "Because w-when nothing else helps, it… it does." The galliard waits for the cuts to heal wholly, before melting back down to his birth form.
She listens carefully to the explanation, even goes so far as to give a brief nod in response, though her expression remains terse. She waits patiently for the wounds to heal, and the instant that Flint eases back down into homid, he's met with a sharp burning sensation on his cheek as the woman's open palm flies by, leaving a rising red mark creeping along his face. She all but hisses at him, "I'm going to tell you what I wish someone had told me when I was your age—get over yourself. The world isn't sunshine and rainbows, but you're alive. If you spend your whole life moaning and whining about how raw of a deal you've gotten, you're going to wake up with no friends, no respect, and at the rate you're going, a permanent mark of shame on your arms to prove your selfishness." She bristles, "That's the truth. You think you're suffering?" SMACK. A matching red mark on his other cheek. "Get over yourself. Others suffered far worse than you have, or—Gaia willing—ever will. You shame them all with your sorrow."
Flint's head turns a little, with the impact, and he tips his head, shows his throat. Mouth opens, then shuts, and he just shakes his head back and forth, then pushes off from the wall. There are, in fact, a few old, pale scars along the boy's arms, things from his past, and he rolls his sleeves back down. "May I go now?" he asks, instead of whatever else he'd had in mind. "Or are. Are you still, going to, to call Kavi or Rina."
This is where Riley should angrily explode, but what crosses over her face instead is something different than the expectation. She takes a step back, rubbing at her opposing arm and closing her eyes. When she opens them again, she doesn't look angry—if anything, the Fostern looks a little hurt. She doesn't wait for him to go. She turns and walks to the door to the restroom, flips the lock off and murmurs, "…Just go." She pulls the door open and steps through it herself, shouldering past a startled-looking man who'd been just about to try to open the door.
Flint sighs for a moment, closes his eyes and draws in a breath, and then leaves the bathroom, shouldering past the same man and then walking after Riley. "Riley," Flint calls out, quietly. "Look, I… it." He waits, though, to catch up with the other Glass Walker before he says anything else.
To her credit, she doesn't just storm on off, though it's clear from her body language that she wants nothing more than to keep on moving. She reins herself in, glancing back over her shoulder as Flint comes walking after. She shoves her hands into her pockets, and stands still, giving the other Glass Walker a tired look, "Yeah?"
Flint takes a breath, approaching to within reaching distance, and then looking up at Riley. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, okay? I… I try, not to make anyone else deal, with that side of things. It helps, but I know that… it hurts everyone else, too. But it makes the world slow down, it makes, things slow down, so that I can move on and do stuff a-and. Be there, when. My packmates need me, when. There's crap that, needs to, be done." There's a pause, another breath, and Flint doesn't look down. In fact, his throat is subtly bared as he talks. "It… you said, there're ways of, making things slow down, without doing that? Except, I… I don't know, I don't know them. That, works. That… takes everything and… it, makes it in a form that I can, concentrate on, and. Then let go of." One hand encircles the opposite wrist where just a little while before, there had been cuts. "So, I'm sorry. I. I didn't, mean, for. That."
He talks. And just keeps on talking, to Riley's surprise. She lifts a hand once he's about midway through, but that doesn't stop him from keeping on, and the Fostern clearly doesn't see the need to silence him. She waits patiently then, until he's said his fill. She gives a small shake of her head, "You got a raw deal. All of us did. If I told you I was perfectly adjusted as a Cliath, I'd be lying through my teeth. I was insufferable." She clears her throat uncomfortably, "But the road you're walking isn't… good." She finishes lamely, shoving her hands back into her pockets, "…Nothing I'm gonna say is gonna help. It's something you get over on your own."
Flint eventually nods, again, and looks away from Riley, for a long moment. And then he hugs her, very briefly, then pulls back away. "I… I'm trying. To do the best I can," he says, quietly.
Looking momentarily taken aback as Flint pushes forward and wraps his arms around her. She doesn't react for a beat, then slowly lifts an arm and gives the kid a brief squeeze, negating his efforts to back away. "…Find a different way. You're a warrior of Gaia, idiot." She leans her head down and gives him a light and painless butt of the head as she releases him. "…You're better than the emo cutters of the world, even if you don't think so right now."
Flint rests his forehead against Riley's shoulder for a moment when she hugs him back, and then swallows, and nods. "I'll… I'll work on that, Riley," he says. "Promise. I promise." There's no mention of in the meantime, no promise of not doing it again until then, just a promise to work on it, pain and guilt and a little, tiny glimmer of hope in the cliath's voice.
Giving a brief nod of her head, Riley murmurs, "Sooner rather than later. Don't let it get worse than it is." She turns and resumes walking away. Then, with a sudden thought, she fishes more deeply into her pocket and sends something flying Flint's way. It's soggy, and a paperback. "Next time you want to feel some pain, just read a Dean Koontz novel. Seriously, there's psychic Golden Retrievers. Shit's ridiculous." Her eyes momentarily brighten, and she waves a hand, then meanders off into the dusk-lit Park.
Flint catches the book before it thumps to the floor, and there's a weak grin. "Seeya, Riley," the teen says, moving over to wander in the direction of the fountain.