On Rooftops

[Crowley]

Crowley rocked the rooftops. Expression tortured. Fingers crabbed and bent as he expended - nay burned - emotional energy jamming long into the night. Hunched over the instrument like a modern day Quasimodo, surrounded by empty beer bottles in something that too closely resembled a Circle for comfort, he played raged into the dark. Tonight his voice was electric guitar, yammering a deranged chorus into the cold air.

Down goes the clown, somehow still awake, but barely. He tells his legs to stand, but they don't listen. They'd buckled beneath him, broken maybe, and twitch about on their own.

He rolls onto his back, looks up at the ogre, and with weak slurred speech, performs what must certainly be his final line: "Fucked . . . The . . . Mistress." A smile--it's for the thought of Crowley escaping to tell the tale. Falstaff would have the ogre's attention, at least, for a few moments more.

Crowley had stood, helpless. Not even his fists had been able to pummel away the psychotic thug, with his baseball bat, who had imprisoned them... and done more besides... Lotion? Full body cleansing? Panic as the needle plunged into his exposed wrist. The apology that sounded so sincere.

So he played out his rage. And the guitar responded. And the beer flowed. Somewhere forgotten by his feet, the cardboard packaging flapped in the breeze.

  

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2015-02-06 22:23:20		Crowley plays the blues rolls 5 to Wits + Expression (10 Again)		1, 10, 7, 3, 7, 7		1 success

Over to you Gyges Benji

[Gyges]

The sanctum was coming together nicely. Everyone's things were all moved in and they were all learning how to get along while living together. It wasn't easy, everyone had their own preference and smoothing things out was taking time. But they were doing it, Gyges was optimistic.

But Crowley... something had been eating at him. It wasn't hard to tell, but Gyges wanted to give the man some space. Approached too early and whatever had been eating Crowley would poison any support Gyges could offer.

It had been long enough though, he wasn't going to let the poison fester any longer. He waits until Crowley finishes his set. "Want to talk?"

[Crowley]

The last notes, stressed, reverberate away into the night sky. Crowley seems frozen in time but slowly, almost painfully, unwinds and rises to his full height. He holds the guitar as if contemplating smashing it with one hammering blow but does not. Instead he takes his time to track down a battle still partially filled with golden liquid.

"Falstaff is dead. And I ran!" Anger; loathing; frustration; spite - they all spat from him like a lanced boil.

[Gyges]

Gyges had exactly zero idea who Falstaff was. Well, that wasn't true, he could guess a lot from the choice of shadow name. But Crowley's grief was like an abscess. Gyges needs to make the attempt to lance the issue and drain away the emotional puss so he could heal from the infection. That's what you did for Cabal, even if it was messy. Especially when it was messy.

"Tell me what happened."

[Crowley]

"Someone was onto us. And we got caught. Locked us up good and tight with a Sleepwalker for a guard. Nasty fucker. I managed to get off a working to slip the chains but Falstaff... not so lucky. He had to break fucking bones to get out of them chains. And then we lure the guard in... I jump him but the fuck beats me off. And the Fool... man, he just signs me to run, you know and fucking insults this goon fuck about fucking his mistress. And the fuck beats him to death with a baseball bat. And what do I do? I run. Climb out of that basement... barn... thing... like a scared fucking.... chimp!"

The words, slurred by drink, tumble in a gargle from his lips. In the end even the words fail as the Acanthus lashes out, sending tinkling shards of glass exploding all around him, crumpled in defeat.

"I couldn't do anything for him. I couldn't even work to unchain him. I wouldn't be here if wasn't for him, the stupid fuck! I... left him behind..."

[Gyges]

"Crowley... I'm sorry that this happened." Gyges was being honest, death was a terrible thing and a violent death like that, no one deserved it. Gyges didn't know how he would react if he was in Crowley's shoes. He thought he'd be able to handle it - that he could deal with it all internally, bottle it up and deal with it rationally, but there wasn't any way to really know, not until it happened.

Gyges was not in any hurry to find out how he'd really deal with it. "Tell me about him."

[Crowley]

That certainly got Crowley's attention. It gave him focus.

"Falstaff. Falstaff the Fool. Free Council voter. Enchanter... Funn.nnn...y man!" His arm shot out, swirling wildly. His words slurred. "So he acted like a fool and and idiot. See... in the end... I saw the man! It wash an act! He was playing a role... an iconic fucking archetype and we were all too blind to see his game. I saw it! In the end. Behind the stupid antics and comedy clown there was a fucking thinker watching from the side lines. He could have been... have been..."

[Gyges]

"So what do you want to do about it?" Gyges knew you didn't have to be an Acanthus to know that oaths had power. Was Crowley going to take a stand and take Falstaff's role in the Assembly? Was he going to become the mind that the Libertines needed so they had some direction? "And what do you need from me to make it happen?"

[Crowley]

The question was a slap - a call to a higher purpose. It lanced the rage, for the moment and least. Crowley's mind, sluggish through drink and debauchery, struggled to think.

"I... Don't know..."

Was it grief that made him turn away? A need for privacy. Disgust at the sudden realisation of just how far he had let himself go; of how he had revelled wallowing in a pit of his own self-pity?

[Gyges]

Gyges spreads his arms. "Think about it man. This isn't something I can tell you what to do so it gets fixed. You need to figure out what will let you come to terms with this. I'm in your corner though; whatever you need, I'll do what I can to provide. A shoulder to cry on, a sounding board for ideas, boots on the ground, doesn't matter what you need, I'm not gonna judge or think less of you." That's what Cabal does, they're there for each other. Gyges isn't going anywhere.