#caladrius.

CALADRIUS. JAVIER “JAVI” CALDERON   —   32,  M.

Healing Transference: Transfer harm to another person (+) any harm can be transferred (+) harm can be spread across multiple people (-) cannot transfer to yourself (-) cannot revive someone from the dead (-) harm must be transferred to a living human (-) person has to be willing, at least subconsciously, to take on another person’s harm.

HISTORY

cw: death, hospitals / doctors

YOU CANNOT BURY THE PAST, it is too large of a body to hide. You were incorrigible, inconsolable, ineffective in your pursuit toward happiness. Joy found itself lodged in-between the incisors of your smile, reason found refuge in the knowledge of your own infallibility. You were born a God among men whose little lives paled at the mention of yours whose life was bright and infectious with meaning. Birthright made you insatiable but it was terror that forced you to submit. On that bloodless paper your future was planned; each detail, every milestone, penned in ink like fate. You were expedited to be someone extraordinary, unfathomably brilliant, and you were, would still be, if the truth had not come stumbling out and made a corollary of your life. They gave you five days to leave. Five days to forget who they were, and who you thought you could ever be. There is nothing but fear and loathing now, nothing for you to do but surrender.

You’re dead before it can even begin. Today a nurse calls you, murmurs your name, and you’re frozen. The air is stale with yesterday’s memories and it hurts to breathe, hurts to remember. Your hands grow weary and the scalpel in your hand blurs into a scythe. You want to destroy it, bend it to your will, but the nurse is looking at you strangely and your moment of hesitant violence is over. There’s a ringing in your ear now, the sharp trill of chaos, and it follows without even having to be asked. It hurts. You think you’re bleeding. You know you are. It’s better this way. You can’t stand the sound of idle chatter in the silence of the room, the lackadaisical chime that occurs most often at times of near death. Don’t they understand the significance of the thing which you are about to do? The role of arbiter has never been an easy task, but to you who truly understands the meaning of effects and consequence, it seems all the more difficult. All the more painful to choose who lives, who dies, who will be given a second chance. Time ticks away and you don’t recognize the person acting on your behalf. In some far off place your mind wanders and the boulder falls to the bottom of the mountain. Once more you are tasked with pushing it up the hill and once more you believe it will mean something. This time will be different, you think. This time, I’ll be changed.

CONNECTIONS

ROBIN  ﹒  BEYOND A CERTAIN POINT THERE IS NO RETURN

If man is a creature like the Beast, then what is to be said of a woman like ROBIN? Her hand catches yours, turns it upside down to reveal the lines of soft flesh, and cuts open your nature as a gaping wound. She knows your weakness and will do most anything to exploit it for her amusement. There is care lingering in the breath between your hate, and it’s only felt when there is something to worry for. She, pressing her luck too many times to be accidental; and you, securing a patient stupid enough to sacrifice themself for her. It’s easy enough to do if you try, but on most days you feel as though should fail your oath and let her bleed out amongst the drivel. What would become of her if she was forced to be her own person, if she weren’t so cruel in the face of fate? You hate her for all she has and will do to you, but you can’t help but try and save her.

ALBATROSS  ﹒  EGO ARTEMITIA. I MADE THIS — I

It’s a game of who can sacrifice more — who will be the most venerated once they have died. There is a sick truth to the heart of all this: you are not good, you are only repaying what you owe. There is no such thing as redemption for people like you, but still you cling onto hope that there could be. ALBATROSS in a similar way understands this need to be useful, to make your life mean more than the harm you have done. This is a friendship built on the communication of the unsaid, a silent recognition of each other’s past mistakes. It is as if to say, “I see you just as you see me, there is no other way for us.” When Caedes Corvi dissolved and you went your separate ways, it was a farewell but it was not forever. Somehow, you knew your paths would cross again, and so too would the game of surrender. It is only a matter of time now before one of you must win.

BLACK HERON  ﹒  TODAY WE WILL TALK ABOUT BLOOD

They know what you are before you can even admit it to yourself. One leveled stare and they have seen you as you have never wished to be seen before. It is as though they have pried open your chest and made a terrible home in marrow of your guilt. They want to expose you, display your organs on a table for all to see and know and touch. You do not know what motivates them, what compels them to dissect you for public consumption and humiliation, and perhaps you never will if mercy stays on your side. When you hold their limp body in your arms and spare them from the ragged embrace of death, you watch as resentment forms like a blood clot. You might have been their salvation but they will try and be your end, you will not let them.