Jacob Kane [ Cain ] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
insertdadjoke) wrote2015-08-01 05:35 pm
insertdadjoke) wrote2015-08-01 05:35 pm
Entry tags:
( tu shansu redux )
Player
Name: DJ
Age: 23
Contact:whitelighter / psitaniums / ![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
biomagnet
Other characters: N/A
Character
Name: Jacob Kane (Cain) {Romulus}
Canon: Original ("Reinforced")
Canon point: Late 2014. Cain has recently returned from his unexpected trip to Texas, beginning to once again suffer blackouts.
Age: 2791. Appears 24.
OC history: Born sometime in 8th century BC, Romulus and his twin Remus were originally from a settlement found in Eastern Europe. Since birth, both twins could see how much time someone had until they died; it wasn't until the raid on their homeland that they understood what it meant. Remus told Romulus that he had more time than could possibly be counted, many times over even newborn babes, and Remus assumed that his time was similar. Romulus was too scared to tell him that Remus' clock would only last to their twenty-fourth year. At a very young age, their homeland was ravaged by war and the twins were taken by the victors as part of the spoils. They were sold early on to Greek nobles for their exotic and rare nature as identical twins, where they were treated as property rather than people for the next three years. When they were near to nine years old, they were presented to an Etruscan family as part of a dowry for the family's daughter. As slaves without citizenship, they had no hope of purchasing their freedom. They were treated properly as slaves in their new home, commodities rather than tools, but resented their position in the world and did not trust the new outlook on their position.
As the two grew, it did not escape the notice of their masters how impossible they were to separate from each other. That was strike one. Strike two was when they entered their late teens and inadvertantly became some very blatant objects of lust to their master's daughters. They refused advances as often as possible. Desperation to be free from the degradation led them to plan something crazy: escape. It would take years to build their idea enough that both would be satisfied it would work, eventually leading to the idea of founding their own village where they could stay and be safe as citizens and leaders. No one could touch them there.
Remus' time continued to tick away. On the night of their escape, they took as much of their master's money as they could squirrel away and ran. With pure determination, they managed to lead their master along for near the entire night before they were caught by a pack of dogs. Remus volunteered to distract them and had Romulus go ahead with their loot to ensure it would not be taken. Distraction turned into sacrifice as the dogs rent Remus apart while Romulus watched from afar. Pure fear kept him from running in and suffering the same fate. He continued to run south, managing to shake the dogs and their captors after running nonstop for two days before he collapsed. He was taken in by a shepherd couple who thankfully did not know he was a slave on the run. With their aid and his stolen treasure, Romulus was able to put into action the plan he and Remus had worked so hard to achieve: Romulus founded Rome.
Despite the shock and trauma of losing his best friend and only family, Romulus buried himself in the work of maintaining an entire city (and later an empire). It became natural for Romulus to emulate his brother's active and protective personality, at first to cheer himself up and eventually becoming the King's natural bearing. Romulus was incredibly progressive for the time, allowing both free men and slaves to become citizens while also forming one of the first steps to organized democracy. After nearly forty years of rule, it was more than apparent that nothing was changing. Romulus had not aged at all and any injury he sustained was gone within seconds. His patricians were increasingly cagey and suspicious of his unaging nature and planned to have him removed in whatever way necessary. Romulus beat them to it, staging his own death for their benefit and absconding with as much of his personal wealth as he could manage.
He started over. North of Italy, he found a small village where the residents were destined for long lives and settled. He fell in love, had children. He still did not age. He left once again.
He started over. Over and over and over. Romulus had no place to call home, no place to settle himself down where he was not eventually met with suspicion, greed and hostile accusations of black dealings with creatures from hell. There was nothing he could do to explain it and no way to rid himself of the curse. For it was most definitely a curse to live forever where he failed to save his brother from his fate. Until about 300BC, anyway. Then he gained some new perspective on the matter.
Romulus witnessed a man cheat death. His timer had hit zero and still he stood among the living. It was obvious the man was on the run, equal parts terrified and elated, yet soon after a specter appeared with weapon in hand to right the wrong. A specter with Romulus' own face: Remus. The deed was done too quickly for a shocked Romulus to react and Remus was gone. Despite having years left in his current life before anyone would notice his lack of age, Romulus left once again. He suddenly had a point to his existence, some reason to push forward: he had to seek out more people who had cheated their deaths and see if the incident would repeat. He had to know why Remus had appeared. It did not take long for Romulus to realize he could induce it himself by helping someone change the course of their fate when their clock was about to run out.
It happened again. Romulus went to try and speak to his brother, but was stopped by an unnatural being in a black robe. It warned him away, saying that Abel had no memory of his living days, that Abel would surely blame his brother for leaving him to his death if he were reminded of their circumstances, that Abel was nothing more than a spirit with consciousness. That Abel was lost to Romulus forever. Guilt and shame crushed Romulus' heart, reminding him of all the doubts and self-recrimination that rightfully belonged to him. He did not deserve to reunite with Remus if his brother was in some other, better existence without his cheating, coward of a little brother trying to drag him back into the mud. The Reaper left Romulus with what it probably thought would be encouraging words, that Romulus should continue to live his life as he had been and let Abel sort himself out. It was a death sentence to the man who could never know death.
Determination led Romulus to keep tabs on Abel from afar. Even if he could never be together with his brother again, he would be damned if he did not at least make sure of his personal safety. It crushed him to see his brother as a blank slate, and it made him ill to consider mixing that with his own issues. In honor of who his brother had become, however, Romulus moved away from the name he had held onto and began going by Cain to finish the religious reference the Reapers had started. He had, after all, been the one to lead his brother to death and his current situation as an Enforcer. Life continued on for Cain where he could eke it out, learning as many languages and skills as necessary to fit in whatever community he happened to settle upon. More and more incidents of people cheating death occurred and Cain spotted more and more Enforcers there to fix it. As the idea of cheating death became more widespread, hushed whispers of a man who had yet to be taken by his Reaper, people became terrified of death. They began to do all sorts of crazy things to try and outlast their time. One time, this resulted in reanimated corpses and Cain put a quick end to those shenanigans once he caught wind.
While his life was far from boring and Cain had long since put his angsty days behind him, instead choosing to live life in the moment and take in everything only he had a chance to experience all at once, his days were more or less pretty normal. Sometimes he lived a lifetime on his own, while others he would find someone to love, get married, have children and eventually move on without them. Most recently, Benjamin Jacobs was married to Lisa Davinch in 1973 and had two children with her. As all of Cain's children were capable of seeing death timers as he was, they grew up resentful and scared of their father's immortality. For the sake of the kids, Benjamin and Lisa were legally divorced; emotionally, they remained together and still managed to fit some dates in when they could.
In 2012, Cain was abducted by an unknown organization who spent the next month poking and prodding at him until his use was apparently run dry. Unknown to him, the organization had planted a subliminal obedience command phrase in his head should they need to bring him back in or otherwise make Cain useful toward their ends: Hellhound, heel. They dropped him off in Nowhere, Alabama and let him work his way back home from there. Cain was obviously not going to stand for that and began investigating. Over the next two years, he dubbed the organization the Death Erasers: they had managed to somehow remove death clocks from small subject groups around the country and were working on refining the process. Cain had no further leads on where to locate them, but that would never stop him looking. They had made it personal.
Two years later, in early 2014, he was still no closer to any actual answers. The year previous, Cain had moved to Arizona to stay closer to Abel, who had settled down in Phoenix with an adopted daughter, Holly, and taken on the last name Fletcher due to internal Enforcer politics. Often Cain would find traces of the Death Erasers' operations and by the time he could investigate more thoroughly, they had moved on. In one such case, Cain followed a lead into a base that had only recently been abandoned and ran into something he couldn't have possibly anticipated: his brother, Abel. Having no recollection of his brother, Abel presumed Cain to be some sort of Death Eraser experiment and shot him on sight. Cain stood back up and explained in some very bare bones facts that they were brothers. He didn't have much choice after Abel had been so poorly confronted with Cain's existence. Thankfully, Abel retained most of his brotherly instinct despite his amnesia and came to reluctantly accept the fact when he couldn't deny the possibility. Cain's clock tied with his story made sense. With their awkward reunion out of the way, Cain decided to make the most of things and moved in to join forces with Abel in their investigation of the "Clockless". Another pair of twins, Angela and Robert Yates, were also living with Abel under his protection as they had been tricked into losing their clocks by the Death Erasers. It made them possible suspects to watch and victims to protect at the same time.
Only a few months after the brothers were learning to live with each other again did the Death Erasers make another move. They rigged Cain's car and took him to a nearby facility. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, Cain got a message out to Abel and was rescued only a scant few hours later. After that particular fiasco, Cain began to experience blackouts where he would lose hours at a time thanks to the activation of the command phrase in his mind, only really becoming aware once he returned home from who-knew-where. As they became more often, he actually began to notice them and brought the matter to Abel, who started investigating the situation on his own. Holly's birthday came and interrupted their worries, with everyone taking a momentary break to celebrate her 14th birthday. However, the Death Erasers took advantage of their distraction and abducted both Cain and Abel right from the Fletcher family home using unknown technology to separate Abel from his spiritual powers and body. It was a week of bloody experiments before the brothers had an opportunity to escape, which they did, and the two of them used their ingenuity and smarts to roadtrip from Texas back to Arizona to inform the Enforcers what had happened. During which time, Abel learned of Cain's unwilling involvement as the "Test Zero" for the Death Erasers' current scheme of removing clocks and attempting to grant immortality, which kind of set a rift between them because Cain avoided thinking and speaking about the incident from two years ago in general.
Some weeks after returning home from Texas, the blackouts started back up again.
Setting: Everyone has a Reaper assigned to them at birth. This supernatural creature watches and waits until the time comes that someone is to die. They arrive to remove the soul from the body, providing it the chance to pass on to the afterlife. However, this can only happen when the body is dead. If someone fails to die at the time allotted by Destiny, an Enforcer is sent in. Enforcers are spirits of humans with a special ability who have yet to pass on for whatever unfinished business they still have. They are capable of connecting with Reapers to locate errant charges and tasked with killing the humans so that they can be culled and the cycle maintained. After a soul is culled, they are allowed to visit a loved one to say a last goodbye. When a Reaper's duty is done, they are reassigned and the cycle begins anew.
In the modern day, there are a subset of people who can become Enforcers in the afterlife. These people possess what is called the Deathsight, which is a power they cannot control or turn off. They see a countdown to person's destined time of death around their neck. It is said that they've all descended from the same single ancestor, although no scientific study has been done to prove it as most people are filled with common sense. More recent times have seen many Deathsights using their abilities for personal gain, whether to extort those who will die soon or otherwise warn people to run from their Reaper in exchange for monetary rewards. Although ghosts are a known quantity in the world when recently-deceased are able to say goodbye, no other supernatural forces have or will be confirmed. Even Deathsights are just folklore and hearsay to the common populace.
Otherwise, the world is pretty much like our own. Ignore that there is a man more or less untouched by time that no one can seem to explain. His actual purpose won't be relevant for another few centuries to come, although it does seem a certain group has interest in replicating him.
However, there exist facets of the universe that Cain does not (and probably never will) know. This is incredibly meta stuff that is more to explain how the brothers have come to be than what will happen to them. Remus and Romulus are the twin sons of Death and Destiny, the two beings in charge of life and death; their existence is the anchor for the world's existence. Although they are human and live in a linear fashion, their soul exists outside of time much as Destiny does. When both of them die, humanity is ended and the world is started over from the beginning in an attempt to reach maximum potential of all creation. Since they're human, one of them must die to render their soul immortal; the body of the living brother follows suit until time has run out as Destiny predicted for their current attempt, wherein the living brother will be culled by his Reaper and the world started anew.
(enforcers + reapers)
Enforcers are the spirits of people who had Deathsight in life and were recruited into serving a greater cause in the afterlife. By becoming an Enforcer, they are given access to death magic (the world's only true form of magic) in order to help them perform their job: aiding the Reapers. Where it used to be a very wide and open job description, about two millennia ago the Enforcers started to organize much more efficiently by forming branches of their operation: dealing with wandering, non-Enforcer spirits, killing people who have outlasted their clock, recruiting other potential-Enforcers and gauging suitability while they still live, and punishing the living who would use their Deathsight to tip the balance of life and death for personal gain.
Reapers themselves, while content to let Enforcers mostly govern themselves, are the top brass in the Enforcer organization. They aren't a chatty bunch, but often are seen by Enforcers as grandfatherly figures who have the utmost authority. It is the Reapers who actually cull the souls of the dead and move them into the afterlife; barring one very traumatic and painful method, Reapers are incapable of killing humans. This is why they employ Enforcers to take care of the mortal side of their business for them.
Deathsight itself is rather self-explanatory. It is the ability to see when someone is destined to die. If anyone were to live past this time due to unforeseen acts of nature or the aid of someone with Deathsight, it could throw things into immeasurable chaos similar to the butterfly theory in time travel. Just one person living when they should have died could set forth catastrophic ripple effects capable of killing people too early or setting back their deaths. Cain himself takes horrendous exception to the people who use their power selfishly because of his own personal circumstances: if he could have one more chance to keep Remus alive, he would do anything he could to change that fate. However, he let the chance go by in order to preserve a balance he understood on such an instinctual level, whereas the people of today try to subvert such a natural law on a regular basis. If Cain couldn't do it, no one else has the damn right to even try. He has no sympathy for anyone who twists death's rules or can't accept their end with grace or bravery even if they knew it was coming.
Personality: As someone whose biological clock stopped at 24 years old, Cain has no trouble adapting to modern lifestyle. He does not feel aged, wizened or persnickety from how long he has actually lived. To all outward appearances, he is just a well-adjusted college-aged young man. He is social, well-read, good with technology and fun-loving. He goes out of his way to collect new experiences and will never say no to reliving the old days every now and then. He does not mourn time gone by so much as celebrate that time still continues on because if he stops to focus on just how old he is and let that weigh him down, then he's as good as lost in the crush of memories and people gone by. Having lived through countless births and deaths in his lifetime, Cain possesses a maturity that might surprise most people: his liveliness matches his body, while his temperament matches his experiences. His loyalty and protective streak is bar none when it comes to his family, no matter if they've technically outgrown him.
Cain lives to love and loves to live. Most people would consider their immortality a sort of curse, but Cain has determined to keep his eyes open and experience the world as new things are constantly shaking down. His heart is more resilient than ever, having lived through many marriages and descendants and he can continue on without remorse; he never marries anyone without letting them know what they're getting into, and his children are free to come to their own conclusions about who their father is. Cain is the judgmental type for anyone except his family: in his eyes, they can do no wrong. Anything that could be his own fault will be his own fault in a misguided attempt to keep his family from experiencing guilt.
Cain is a very honest man. More often than not, he chooses to lie through omission than try to swerve around a subject. Most things are not worth keeping a secret over when "most things" will only last for a finite amount of time anyway. Might as well make it through his time with as clear of a conscience as he can mange. This is unusual for someone like Cain, who is a natural leader in the sense that he can understand the people around him and intuit how to make them productive and happy, uses his position of authority fairly, and takes criticism in stride. If he does something that he is not proud of doing, he would be the first to admit it when confronted. If something were to happen outside his control that he couldn't wrestle himself on top of, however, Cain tends to pretend that it never occurred to the outside world while keeping it locked up inside until he can be sure it will never happen again. His failures are public, while his shames are never shown the light of day.
Many of these good outward qualities tend to mask the deep scars on Cain's psyche amassed from living over such a long period of time. One of his largest weaknesses is that he considers himself a coward who cannot commit once something is out of his sight: he couldn't stay for Remus, he doesn't stay for his family once he's stayed in one place for too long, he moves on from one marriage to the next anytime after death do they part. It speaks of the guilt he carries from Remus' death all the way into the present. Because he ran away from the date on Remus' death clock and never told him of how young he would die, Cain lost his brother in what could have been a preventable happening. Because of Remus' loss, Cain is terrified of being alone for too long of a stretch and looks for someone to love and be loved in return. Because he fears being too large of a burden on those he loves, Cain leaves when it starts to become obvious that he does not age. Some might commend him on his bravery for continuing to move on after such difficult life events, but Cain does not see it that way at all and simply condemns himself for continued weakness. From his loneliness was his current personality born when attempting to emulate Remus eventually grew into simply being more extroverted than his timid and thoughtful tendencies. This, too, is a form of running away from who he really is over time, yet it cannot be denied that Cain would find it impossible to return to who he used to be even were he to conquer his fears.
As the original king of Rome, Cain does possess in him quite an ego. He puts his life above that of all other human beings and his own interests unequivocally at the top of the line. Not to say that he doesn't care, he really can and sometimes does, but he will always care about himself (and Abel) most. He has the knowledge and understanding enough of people around him to be incredibly manipulative and amass a large amount of power if he so wished to. Thankfully, he has mellowed out in his years and generally works on a smaller scale of entertaining himself. Power always lies within his grasp, whether the world realizes it or not, and thus he doesn't feel the need to cling to it like some kind of insecure child. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and Cain does enjoy the opportunity to relax every millennium or so.
In spite of his honesty, Cain can be very uncaring and even downright cruel to people uninvolved with him. He is perfectly fine and polite to those he meets in society and is not averse to making new friends when personalities click, but he does not donate time or money to charities, or allow himself to be suckered by a hungry face on the street. Three thousand years of death, hunger, disease, war and hatred has made Cain numb to things outside of his worldview. As he has done in the past, Cain has little problem with killing people even today if they present a threat to him; while he would not murder anyone just for taking a swing at him, he will beat someone down and make sure they stay down before going on his way. One of the only things that keeps him in check is current day monitoring systems making him accountable for much of what he does: being caught would mean entering the system officially and thus making it only harder on himself in coming years to keep creating identities to live through. Someone's only saving grace from an agitated Cain is likely to be his family or friends, as they are his only support system and he would rather keep them happy than deal with some punk on the street. His view of fate is very black and white: if someone's clock has run out, then they should be dead. It is the simple fact of life, and he has no sympathies for those trying to outrun their clock despite his own doubts that he should have helped his older brother do the same so long ago.
Watching Remus die before his eyes has left Cain without any sort of anchor in life. He could not die, but had no real purpose to live for either. In his own mind, it will always be Cain who killed Abel. He accepts that as the honest truth and that fact was why he kept away from Abel for so long despite knowing that his brother was somewhere out there, waiting on a promise that he doesn't even remember. Cain is ashamed and terrified that Abel will not want to see him once his memories return, that Abel will cut Cain out entirely for being the catalyst to his current existence. At the very same time, Cain holds onto and nurtures the hope that such rejection will not come to pass and stays by Abel's side for the small possibility that he will be accepted.
While being pulled into Tu Shanshu... actually would be the strangest thing to happen to him, it would not overly phase Cain. As long as he's lived, there have been things he is still surprised by and new knowledge to acquire. Another world with another species with other laws are all new and will take getting used to, but if there is one thing that Cain has mastered in his time on Earth, it's rolling with the punches. No matter the strangeness or the tense political unrest he's been pulled into, Cain is capable of adapting and taking things at his own pace until he understands the new world around him.
Appearance: A beautiful man. Kept at the physical age of a young adult, Cain is notably handsome. His hair is dark brown-ish black, skin white with an olive complexion, and eyes are a stormy blue. He stands at six feet tall. He generally keeps himself just a little unkempt and wears casual clothing that often has him mistaken for someone of college age and sometimes even younger. His played-by is Matt Bomer.
Abilities: Having lived for really fucking long, Cain has picked up numerous skills and languages. Although many of them are not the best use, they still sit in the back of his mind and he could probably pick them back up if given the reason. He has about ten languages he actively uses and keeps at a native level (having fluency in over forty) and most of his practiced skills tend to be indicative of a modern mindset instead of things like hunting your own food or rigging a boat. While not explicitly an ability, Cain and Abel are mirror image twins: Cain came out as the mirror, meaning that he is left-handed and one of the very rare cases of having mirrored internal organs to match.
- Immortal and ageless. Cain does not age. He cannot remain harmed. If any damage is done to him, it simply reverses: blood lost will seep back into the wound and it will pull back together as if nothing happened. The same thing happens for lost limbs or organs. Pain still exists as long as the wounds are there, but subsides once they have been healed. He does not experience death, so much as indeterminate unconsciousness when violently incapacitated.
- Deathsight. Cain can see the time left that someone has to live. This manifests as a timer in front of someone's neck — gold indicates a living person, while silver means a spirit of some sort. My assumption is that this timer will only read the time of a character's canon death (whether they live to old age, die in season two or have arrived past their death), and will not be moving while in Tu Shanshu. This sight also allows him to see supernatural phenomena such as spirits.
Inventory:
- Smartphone
- Wallet ($25, AZ license for "Jacob Kane" born 1984, some debit and credit cards)
- Keys
- Leatherman
- Switchblade
- Power-granting choker of parallel design to his soul gem
Suitability: Through the rough-and-tumble circumstances of his life, Cain has learned to take the good with the bad and act appropriately. This does not mean that he acts according to societal standards, but can take in and cope with whatever mood whiplash he may come across. A bit of darkness in an otherwise slice-like day isn't going to mess with him, and neither will a dark time lit only by occasional lightheartedness.
Soul gem: A choker made of two parallel bands connecting to a circle of crazy lace agate as the gem, meeting in the back via slide knots. With the hollow point in the gem and the band of the choker, it looks like it might actually belong with another piece to become the full picture. Cain wears it as a bracelet double-looped around his left wrist.
In-character samples
Third-person: It probably said a lot about Cain that even in the face of his brother stabbing him near to death while they were on the run from death-defying, tantrum-throwing children, he still couldn't possibly be mad at Abel. It was definitely Abel who had done it, not the young man he had been back in life, but the man he had become under the Reapers' thumb for three thousand years. And who was to blame for that? It was Cain: everything had been Cain's fault, from the very moment Romulus had shied away from telling Remus his time up to the present point of never mentioning his abduction by the Death Erasers. He had let Remus be chipped away little by little because of his own self-feeding loop of fear.
It had been almost a week since they made it back from Texas. Cain was still living in-house with Abel (and Holly and Angie and Rob), and yet he had hardly seen hide or hair of his older brother. Any steps they had taken toward coming together again had been put on hold — they weren't gone, and Cain knew that for a fact or... well, he was sure he wouldn't be allowed under the same roof as Abel's adopted daughter and the Enforcers' current pair of pet hostages. He couldn't appeal to the Enforcers to speak to Abel, either, even if they were his sons, daughters, grandchildren he had seen grow from the shadows, descendents entire generations removed. They knew him even if they didn't know Cain, and yet Cain had fucked up. It was something about himself, his very existence, that now put the balance of life and death on the edge of a knife.
The Death Erasers had turned Cain into their tool and he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone until it was far too late.
Grunting forcefully, Cain swung his legs over the side of his bed and trudged out into the hallway. He wasn't one to go binge drinking and he had more than enough practice to go without sleep for a few days until his body was too tired to pretend anymore, but he could really use something strong right now in the face of no presenting solutions. When he entered the kitchen, the light over the stove was on and he saw Rob sitting at the island with a cup of coffee and an old book of kiddy puzzles.
Cain tilted his head, then added some weight to his steps so that Rob would hear him coming. He'd been walking lightly recently as if some invisibility now would help save him from events already passed. Rob looked up at the footfalls and canted his head, unintentionally bringing sharp attention to the empty space at his neck. Cain couldn't help but stare as he moved to the cupboard and began searching around for something good; any alcohol in the house would have to be the Yates', as Abel didn't eat or drink and Holly was too young for his brother to have considered even keeping up the appearance.
"Couldn't sleep, either?" asked Rob, attention turning back down to the maze asking him to help a bunny slipper find its mate on the other end.
Having found something strong enough that wasn't going to make him leave snobby looks in the Yates' direction come the morning, Cain got out a glass and poured a generous finger before he sat down opposite Rob. "Sleep's overrated. What's keeping you up?"
"Nothing, just don't sleep well every now and then. There it is," he muttered to himself, apparently actually invested in his work.
"Coffee helps with that," Cain said mildly, unable to keep his eyes off what he could see of Rob's neck. That was his fault. This whole thing was his fault and now he had been locked out of trying to fix it. Abel was furious, the Enforcers beyond his reach in their current tizzy of fixing the problem, and Cain could only sit back and watch. "Does it freak you out to know you're an abomination to death?"
Rob paused, put his pencil down, slowly looked up at Cain. "Not as much as you'd think," he said slowly. "It's what they're doing by keeping us here and away from, you know, living that bugs us."
Cain sipped at his drink, hand clenched about the glass precariously. It didn't matter if it shattered, save for the sound that might wake someone, and at this point he'd almost relish bringing someone into the misery with him... unless it was Holly. She was only a few generations removed from him and he didn't have the heart to fuck up another part of his family right now. "Sorry about that," he said into his glass.
"Yours isn't the sorry we want." Rob spoke for Angie, too. That was how those two worked, trusting each other to speak for themselves on the whole but respecting each other to have their individualities, too.
Cain wished he even had that much with Abel right now. His hand came down a little too hard on the countertop, and Rob grimaced at the sound. Cain stared at the book between them, already tracing out the three different solutions to pair bunny slipper with bunny slipper before he looked back up to Rob. "Yeah, it is. They want me to keep you out of the loop because blah blah paranoia, but this one's pretty big: if those Clockless assholes hadn't taken me two years ago, you wouldn't be here. That part is my fault."
Rob suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Is that what you two have been fighting about? Whether you're guilty for being abducted?" he asked. The touchy-feely thing was more Angie's side of it, and Cain could tell it was making Rob uncomfortable to have some feelings thrust upon him, as well. Tough. Rob walked into the Death Erasers' trap and had his clock erased, so he could deal with some fucking responsibility for currently throwing the world into an unhinged, under-the-surface chaos. "Because... that's bullshit."
Wait, what?
Cain looked at Rob for a moment, searching, and saw what he was afraid of. He shook his head, abandoned his drink, and stood. "'Fraid not, kid," he said. "You've still got time, plenty time to learn, but here's the thing: no one else was in control of that but me. Maybe not the kidnapping, but I chose to deal with it on my own when I shouldn't have, even after I saw what they were doing. I'm going to go get some air. Tell Abel you tried to stop me if he gets mad," he added, not really wanting to cause more complications in the house than there already were.
With that said, he grabbed his shoes and jacket by the door and left. At least they'd found his car by now.
First-person: Wow, things have changed a bit since I was... awake last. I think? Looks like I've lost some time but I'm not sure how much. Which is more than a little worrying. Anyone still here who recognizes me?
If not, well, my name's Jacob Kane. Last I remember we'd just finished cleaning up Malicant and woke up after the whole debacle. Kind of a weird time to blank out considering we'd been asleep for a year anyway, actually... I guess it doesn't matter. What happened's happened.
Name: DJ
Age: 23
Contact:
whitelighter / psitaniums / Other characters: N/A
Character
Name: Jacob Kane (Cain) {Romulus}
Canon: Original ("Reinforced")
Canon point: Late 2014. Cain has recently returned from his unexpected trip to Texas, beginning to once again suffer blackouts.
Age: 2791. Appears 24.
OC history: Born sometime in 8th century BC, Romulus and his twin Remus were originally from a settlement found in Eastern Europe. Since birth, both twins could see how much time someone had until they died; it wasn't until the raid on their homeland that they understood what it meant. Remus told Romulus that he had more time than could possibly be counted, many times over even newborn babes, and Remus assumed that his time was similar. Romulus was too scared to tell him that Remus' clock would only last to their twenty-fourth year. At a very young age, their homeland was ravaged by war and the twins were taken by the victors as part of the spoils. They were sold early on to Greek nobles for their exotic and rare nature as identical twins, where they were treated as property rather than people for the next three years. When they were near to nine years old, they were presented to an Etruscan family as part of a dowry for the family's daughter. As slaves without citizenship, they had no hope of purchasing their freedom. They were treated properly as slaves in their new home, commodities rather than tools, but resented their position in the world and did not trust the new outlook on their position.
As the two grew, it did not escape the notice of their masters how impossible they were to separate from each other. That was strike one. Strike two was when they entered their late teens and inadvertantly became some very blatant objects of lust to their master's daughters. They refused advances as often as possible. Desperation to be free from the degradation led them to plan something crazy: escape. It would take years to build their idea enough that both would be satisfied it would work, eventually leading to the idea of founding their own village where they could stay and be safe as citizens and leaders. No one could touch them there.
Remus' time continued to tick away. On the night of their escape, they took as much of their master's money as they could squirrel away and ran. With pure determination, they managed to lead their master along for near the entire night before they were caught by a pack of dogs. Remus volunteered to distract them and had Romulus go ahead with their loot to ensure it would not be taken. Distraction turned into sacrifice as the dogs rent Remus apart while Romulus watched from afar. Pure fear kept him from running in and suffering the same fate. He continued to run south, managing to shake the dogs and their captors after running nonstop for two days before he collapsed. He was taken in by a shepherd couple who thankfully did not know he was a slave on the run. With their aid and his stolen treasure, Romulus was able to put into action the plan he and Remus had worked so hard to achieve: Romulus founded Rome.
Despite the shock and trauma of losing his best friend and only family, Romulus buried himself in the work of maintaining an entire city (and later an empire). It became natural for Romulus to emulate his brother's active and protective personality, at first to cheer himself up and eventually becoming the King's natural bearing. Romulus was incredibly progressive for the time, allowing both free men and slaves to become citizens while also forming one of the first steps to organized democracy. After nearly forty years of rule, it was more than apparent that nothing was changing. Romulus had not aged at all and any injury he sustained was gone within seconds. His patricians were increasingly cagey and suspicious of his unaging nature and planned to have him removed in whatever way necessary. Romulus beat them to it, staging his own death for their benefit and absconding with as much of his personal wealth as he could manage.
He started over. North of Italy, he found a small village where the residents were destined for long lives and settled. He fell in love, had children. He still did not age. He left once again.
He started over. Over and over and over. Romulus had no place to call home, no place to settle himself down where he was not eventually met with suspicion, greed and hostile accusations of black dealings with creatures from hell. There was nothing he could do to explain it and no way to rid himself of the curse. For it was most definitely a curse to live forever where he failed to save his brother from his fate. Until about 300BC, anyway. Then he gained some new perspective on the matter.
Romulus witnessed a man cheat death. His timer had hit zero and still he stood among the living. It was obvious the man was on the run, equal parts terrified and elated, yet soon after a specter appeared with weapon in hand to right the wrong. A specter with Romulus' own face: Remus. The deed was done too quickly for a shocked Romulus to react and Remus was gone. Despite having years left in his current life before anyone would notice his lack of age, Romulus left once again. He suddenly had a point to his existence, some reason to push forward: he had to seek out more people who had cheated their deaths and see if the incident would repeat. He had to know why Remus had appeared. It did not take long for Romulus to realize he could induce it himself by helping someone change the course of their fate when their clock was about to run out.
It happened again. Romulus went to try and speak to his brother, but was stopped by an unnatural being in a black robe. It warned him away, saying that Abel had no memory of his living days, that Abel would surely blame his brother for leaving him to his death if he were reminded of their circumstances, that Abel was nothing more than a spirit with consciousness. That Abel was lost to Romulus forever. Guilt and shame crushed Romulus' heart, reminding him of all the doubts and self-recrimination that rightfully belonged to him. He did not deserve to reunite with Remus if his brother was in some other, better existence without his cheating, coward of a little brother trying to drag him back into the mud. The Reaper left Romulus with what it probably thought would be encouraging words, that Romulus should continue to live his life as he had been and let Abel sort himself out. It was a death sentence to the man who could never know death.
Determination led Romulus to keep tabs on Abel from afar. Even if he could never be together with his brother again, he would be damned if he did not at least make sure of his personal safety. It crushed him to see his brother as a blank slate, and it made him ill to consider mixing that with his own issues. In honor of who his brother had become, however, Romulus moved away from the name he had held onto and began going by Cain to finish the religious reference the Reapers had started. He had, after all, been the one to lead his brother to death and his current situation as an Enforcer. Life continued on for Cain where he could eke it out, learning as many languages and skills as necessary to fit in whatever community he happened to settle upon. More and more incidents of people cheating death occurred and Cain spotted more and more Enforcers there to fix it. As the idea of cheating death became more widespread, hushed whispers of a man who had yet to be taken by his Reaper, people became terrified of death. They began to do all sorts of crazy things to try and outlast their time. One time, this resulted in reanimated corpses and Cain put a quick end to those shenanigans once he caught wind.
While his life was far from boring and Cain had long since put his angsty days behind him, instead choosing to live life in the moment and take in everything only he had a chance to experience all at once, his days were more or less pretty normal. Sometimes he lived a lifetime on his own, while others he would find someone to love, get married, have children and eventually move on without them. Most recently, Benjamin Jacobs was married to Lisa Davinch in 1973 and had two children with her. As all of Cain's children were capable of seeing death timers as he was, they grew up resentful and scared of their father's immortality. For the sake of the kids, Benjamin and Lisa were legally divorced; emotionally, they remained together and still managed to fit some dates in when they could.
In 2012, Cain was abducted by an unknown organization who spent the next month poking and prodding at him until his use was apparently run dry. Unknown to him, the organization had planted a subliminal obedience command phrase in his head should they need to bring him back in or otherwise make Cain useful toward their ends: Hellhound, heel. They dropped him off in Nowhere, Alabama and let him work his way back home from there. Cain was obviously not going to stand for that and began investigating. Over the next two years, he dubbed the organization the Death Erasers: they had managed to somehow remove death clocks from small subject groups around the country and were working on refining the process. Cain had no further leads on where to locate them, but that would never stop him looking. They had made it personal.
Two years later, in early 2014, he was still no closer to any actual answers. The year previous, Cain had moved to Arizona to stay closer to Abel, who had settled down in Phoenix with an adopted daughter, Holly, and taken on the last name Fletcher due to internal Enforcer politics. Often Cain would find traces of the Death Erasers' operations and by the time he could investigate more thoroughly, they had moved on. In one such case, Cain followed a lead into a base that had only recently been abandoned and ran into something he couldn't have possibly anticipated: his brother, Abel. Having no recollection of his brother, Abel presumed Cain to be some sort of Death Eraser experiment and shot him on sight. Cain stood back up and explained in some very bare bones facts that they were brothers. He didn't have much choice after Abel had been so poorly confronted with Cain's existence. Thankfully, Abel retained most of his brotherly instinct despite his amnesia and came to reluctantly accept the fact when he couldn't deny the possibility. Cain's clock tied with his story made sense. With their awkward reunion out of the way, Cain decided to make the most of things and moved in to join forces with Abel in their investigation of the "Clockless". Another pair of twins, Angela and Robert Yates, were also living with Abel under his protection as they had been tricked into losing their clocks by the Death Erasers. It made them possible suspects to watch and victims to protect at the same time.
Only a few months after the brothers were learning to live with each other again did the Death Erasers make another move. They rigged Cain's car and took him to a nearby facility. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, Cain got a message out to Abel and was rescued only a scant few hours later. After that particular fiasco, Cain began to experience blackouts where he would lose hours at a time thanks to the activation of the command phrase in his mind, only really becoming aware once he returned home from who-knew-where. As they became more often, he actually began to notice them and brought the matter to Abel, who started investigating the situation on his own. Holly's birthday came and interrupted their worries, with everyone taking a momentary break to celebrate her 14th birthday. However, the Death Erasers took advantage of their distraction and abducted both Cain and Abel right from the Fletcher family home using unknown technology to separate Abel from his spiritual powers and body. It was a week of bloody experiments before the brothers had an opportunity to escape, which they did, and the two of them used their ingenuity and smarts to roadtrip from Texas back to Arizona to inform the Enforcers what had happened. During which time, Abel learned of Cain's unwilling involvement as the "Test Zero" for the Death Erasers' current scheme of removing clocks and attempting to grant immortality, which kind of set a rift between them because Cain avoided thinking and speaking about the incident from two years ago in general.
Some weeks after returning home from Texas, the blackouts started back up again.
Setting: Everyone has a Reaper assigned to them at birth. This supernatural creature watches and waits until the time comes that someone is to die. They arrive to remove the soul from the body, providing it the chance to pass on to the afterlife. However, this can only happen when the body is dead. If someone fails to die at the time allotted by Destiny, an Enforcer is sent in. Enforcers are spirits of humans with a special ability who have yet to pass on for whatever unfinished business they still have. They are capable of connecting with Reapers to locate errant charges and tasked with killing the humans so that they can be culled and the cycle maintained. After a soul is culled, they are allowed to visit a loved one to say a last goodbye. When a Reaper's duty is done, they are reassigned and the cycle begins anew.
In the modern day, there are a subset of people who can become Enforcers in the afterlife. These people possess what is called the Deathsight, which is a power they cannot control or turn off. They see a countdown to person's destined time of death around their neck. It is said that they've all descended from the same single ancestor, although no scientific study has been done to prove it as most people are filled with common sense. More recent times have seen many Deathsights using their abilities for personal gain, whether to extort those who will die soon or otherwise warn people to run from their Reaper in exchange for monetary rewards. Although ghosts are a known quantity in the world when recently-deceased are able to say goodbye, no other supernatural forces have or will be confirmed. Even Deathsights are just folklore and hearsay to the common populace.
Otherwise, the world is pretty much like our own. Ignore that there is a man more or less untouched by time that no one can seem to explain. His actual purpose won't be relevant for another few centuries to come, although it does seem a certain group has interest in replicating him.
However, there exist facets of the universe that Cain does not (and probably never will) know. This is incredibly meta stuff that is more to explain how the brothers have come to be than what will happen to them. Remus and Romulus are the twin sons of Death and Destiny, the two beings in charge of life and death; their existence is the anchor for the world's existence. Although they are human and live in a linear fashion, their soul exists outside of time much as Destiny does. When both of them die, humanity is ended and the world is started over from the beginning in an attempt to reach maximum potential of all creation. Since they're human, one of them must die to render their soul immortal; the body of the living brother follows suit until time has run out as Destiny predicted for their current attempt, wherein the living brother will be culled by his Reaper and the world started anew.
(enforcers + reapers)
Enforcers are the spirits of people who had Deathsight in life and were recruited into serving a greater cause in the afterlife. By becoming an Enforcer, they are given access to death magic (the world's only true form of magic) in order to help them perform their job: aiding the Reapers. Where it used to be a very wide and open job description, about two millennia ago the Enforcers started to organize much more efficiently by forming branches of their operation: dealing with wandering, non-Enforcer spirits, killing people who have outlasted their clock, recruiting other potential-Enforcers and gauging suitability while they still live, and punishing the living who would use their Deathsight to tip the balance of life and death for personal gain.
Reapers themselves, while content to let Enforcers mostly govern themselves, are the top brass in the Enforcer organization. They aren't a chatty bunch, but often are seen by Enforcers as grandfatherly figures who have the utmost authority. It is the Reapers who actually cull the souls of the dead and move them into the afterlife; barring one very traumatic and painful method, Reapers are incapable of killing humans. This is why they employ Enforcers to take care of the mortal side of their business for them.
Deathsight itself is rather self-explanatory. It is the ability to see when someone is destined to die. If anyone were to live past this time due to unforeseen acts of nature or the aid of someone with Deathsight, it could throw things into immeasurable chaos similar to the butterfly theory in time travel. Just one person living when they should have died could set forth catastrophic ripple effects capable of killing people too early or setting back their deaths. Cain himself takes horrendous exception to the people who use their power selfishly because of his own personal circumstances: if he could have one more chance to keep Remus alive, he would do anything he could to change that fate. However, he let the chance go by in order to preserve a balance he understood on such an instinctual level, whereas the people of today try to subvert such a natural law on a regular basis. If Cain couldn't do it, no one else has the damn right to even try. He has no sympathy for anyone who twists death's rules or can't accept their end with grace or bravery even if they knew it was coming.
Personality: As someone whose biological clock stopped at 24 years old, Cain has no trouble adapting to modern lifestyle. He does not feel aged, wizened or persnickety from how long he has actually lived. To all outward appearances, he is just a well-adjusted college-aged young man. He is social, well-read, good with technology and fun-loving. He goes out of his way to collect new experiences and will never say no to reliving the old days every now and then. He does not mourn time gone by so much as celebrate that time still continues on because if he stops to focus on just how old he is and let that weigh him down, then he's as good as lost in the crush of memories and people gone by. Having lived through countless births and deaths in his lifetime, Cain possesses a maturity that might surprise most people: his liveliness matches his body, while his temperament matches his experiences. His loyalty and protective streak is bar none when it comes to his family, no matter if they've technically outgrown him.
Cain lives to love and loves to live. Most people would consider their immortality a sort of curse, but Cain has determined to keep his eyes open and experience the world as new things are constantly shaking down. His heart is more resilient than ever, having lived through many marriages and descendants and he can continue on without remorse; he never marries anyone without letting them know what they're getting into, and his children are free to come to their own conclusions about who their father is. Cain is the judgmental type for anyone except his family: in his eyes, they can do no wrong. Anything that could be his own fault will be his own fault in a misguided attempt to keep his family from experiencing guilt.
Cain is a very honest man. More often than not, he chooses to lie through omission than try to swerve around a subject. Most things are not worth keeping a secret over when "most things" will only last for a finite amount of time anyway. Might as well make it through his time with as clear of a conscience as he can mange. This is unusual for someone like Cain, who is a natural leader in the sense that he can understand the people around him and intuit how to make them productive and happy, uses his position of authority fairly, and takes criticism in stride. If he does something that he is not proud of doing, he would be the first to admit it when confronted. If something were to happen outside his control that he couldn't wrestle himself on top of, however, Cain tends to pretend that it never occurred to the outside world while keeping it locked up inside until he can be sure it will never happen again. His failures are public, while his shames are never shown the light of day.
Many of these good outward qualities tend to mask the deep scars on Cain's psyche amassed from living over such a long period of time. One of his largest weaknesses is that he considers himself a coward who cannot commit once something is out of his sight: he couldn't stay for Remus, he doesn't stay for his family once he's stayed in one place for too long, he moves on from one marriage to the next anytime after death do they part. It speaks of the guilt he carries from Remus' death all the way into the present. Because he ran away from the date on Remus' death clock and never told him of how young he would die, Cain lost his brother in what could have been a preventable happening. Because of Remus' loss, Cain is terrified of being alone for too long of a stretch and looks for someone to love and be loved in return. Because he fears being too large of a burden on those he loves, Cain leaves when it starts to become obvious that he does not age. Some might commend him on his bravery for continuing to move on after such difficult life events, but Cain does not see it that way at all and simply condemns himself for continued weakness. From his loneliness was his current personality born when attempting to emulate Remus eventually grew into simply being more extroverted than his timid and thoughtful tendencies. This, too, is a form of running away from who he really is over time, yet it cannot be denied that Cain would find it impossible to return to who he used to be even were he to conquer his fears.
As the original king of Rome, Cain does possess in him quite an ego. He puts his life above that of all other human beings and his own interests unequivocally at the top of the line. Not to say that he doesn't care, he really can and sometimes does, but he will always care about himself (and Abel) most. He has the knowledge and understanding enough of people around him to be incredibly manipulative and amass a large amount of power if he so wished to. Thankfully, he has mellowed out in his years and generally works on a smaller scale of entertaining himself. Power always lies within his grasp, whether the world realizes it or not, and thus he doesn't feel the need to cling to it like some kind of insecure child. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and Cain does enjoy the opportunity to relax every millennium or so.
In spite of his honesty, Cain can be very uncaring and even downright cruel to people uninvolved with him. He is perfectly fine and polite to those he meets in society and is not averse to making new friends when personalities click, but he does not donate time or money to charities, or allow himself to be suckered by a hungry face on the street. Three thousand years of death, hunger, disease, war and hatred has made Cain numb to things outside of his worldview. As he has done in the past, Cain has little problem with killing people even today if they present a threat to him; while he would not murder anyone just for taking a swing at him, he will beat someone down and make sure they stay down before going on his way. One of the only things that keeps him in check is current day monitoring systems making him accountable for much of what he does: being caught would mean entering the system officially and thus making it only harder on himself in coming years to keep creating identities to live through. Someone's only saving grace from an agitated Cain is likely to be his family or friends, as they are his only support system and he would rather keep them happy than deal with some punk on the street. His view of fate is very black and white: if someone's clock has run out, then they should be dead. It is the simple fact of life, and he has no sympathies for those trying to outrun their clock despite his own doubts that he should have helped his older brother do the same so long ago.
Watching Remus die before his eyes has left Cain without any sort of anchor in life. He could not die, but had no real purpose to live for either. In his own mind, it will always be Cain who killed Abel. He accepts that as the honest truth and that fact was why he kept away from Abel for so long despite knowing that his brother was somewhere out there, waiting on a promise that he doesn't even remember. Cain is ashamed and terrified that Abel will not want to see him once his memories return, that Abel will cut Cain out entirely for being the catalyst to his current existence. At the very same time, Cain holds onto and nurtures the hope that such rejection will not come to pass and stays by Abel's side for the small possibility that he will be accepted.
While being pulled into Tu Shanshu... actually would be the strangest thing to happen to him, it would not overly phase Cain. As long as he's lived, there have been things he is still surprised by and new knowledge to acquire. Another world with another species with other laws are all new and will take getting used to, but if there is one thing that Cain has mastered in his time on Earth, it's rolling with the punches. No matter the strangeness or the tense political unrest he's been pulled into, Cain is capable of adapting and taking things at his own pace until he understands the new world around him.
Appearance: A beautiful man. Kept at the physical age of a young adult, Cain is notably handsome. His hair is dark brown-ish black, skin white with an olive complexion, and eyes are a stormy blue. He stands at six feet tall. He generally keeps himself just a little unkempt and wears casual clothing that often has him mistaken for someone of college age and sometimes even younger. His played-by is Matt Bomer.
Abilities: Having lived for really fucking long, Cain has picked up numerous skills and languages. Although many of them are not the best use, they still sit in the back of his mind and he could probably pick them back up if given the reason. He has about ten languages he actively uses and keeps at a native level (having fluency in over forty) and most of his practiced skills tend to be indicative of a modern mindset instead of things like hunting your own food or rigging a boat. While not explicitly an ability, Cain and Abel are mirror image twins: Cain came out as the mirror, meaning that he is left-handed and one of the very rare cases of having mirrored internal organs to match.
- Immortal and ageless. Cain does not age. He cannot remain harmed. If any damage is done to him, it simply reverses: blood lost will seep back into the wound and it will pull back together as if nothing happened. The same thing happens for lost limbs or organs. Pain still exists as long as the wounds are there, but subsides once they have been healed. He does not experience death, so much as indeterminate unconsciousness when violently incapacitated.
- Deathsight. Cain can see the time left that someone has to live. This manifests as a timer in front of someone's neck — gold indicates a living person, while silver means a spirit of some sort. My assumption is that this timer will only read the time of a character's canon death (whether they live to old age, die in season two or have arrived past their death), and will not be moving while in Tu Shanshu. This sight also allows him to see supernatural phenomena such as spirits.
Inventory:
- Smartphone
- Wallet ($25, AZ license for "Jacob Kane" born 1984, some debit and credit cards)
- Keys
- Leatherman
- Switchblade
- Power-granting choker of parallel design to his soul gem
Suitability: Through the rough-and-tumble circumstances of his life, Cain has learned to take the good with the bad and act appropriately. This does not mean that he acts according to societal standards, but can take in and cope with whatever mood whiplash he may come across. A bit of darkness in an otherwise slice-like day isn't going to mess with him, and neither will a dark time lit only by occasional lightheartedness.
Soul gem: A choker made of two parallel bands connecting to a circle of crazy lace agate as the gem, meeting in the back via slide knots. With the hollow point in the gem and the band of the choker, it looks like it might actually belong with another piece to become the full picture. Cain wears it as a bracelet double-looped around his left wrist.
In-character samples
Third-person: It probably said a lot about Cain that even in the face of his brother stabbing him near to death while they were on the run from death-defying, tantrum-throwing children, he still couldn't possibly be mad at Abel. It was definitely Abel who had done it, not the young man he had been back in life, but the man he had become under the Reapers' thumb for three thousand years. And who was to blame for that? It was Cain: everything had been Cain's fault, from the very moment Romulus had shied away from telling Remus his time up to the present point of never mentioning his abduction by the Death Erasers. He had let Remus be chipped away little by little because of his own self-feeding loop of fear.
It had been almost a week since they made it back from Texas. Cain was still living in-house with Abel (and Holly and Angie and Rob), and yet he had hardly seen hide or hair of his older brother. Any steps they had taken toward coming together again had been put on hold — they weren't gone, and Cain knew that for a fact or... well, he was sure he wouldn't be allowed under the same roof as Abel's adopted daughter and the Enforcers' current pair of pet hostages. He couldn't appeal to the Enforcers to speak to Abel, either, even if they were his sons, daughters, grandchildren he had seen grow from the shadows, descendents entire generations removed. They knew him even if they didn't know Cain, and yet Cain had fucked up. It was something about himself, his very existence, that now put the balance of life and death on the edge of a knife.
The Death Erasers had turned Cain into their tool and he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone until it was far too late.
Grunting forcefully, Cain swung his legs over the side of his bed and trudged out into the hallway. He wasn't one to go binge drinking and he had more than enough practice to go without sleep for a few days until his body was too tired to pretend anymore, but he could really use something strong right now in the face of no presenting solutions. When he entered the kitchen, the light over the stove was on and he saw Rob sitting at the island with a cup of coffee and an old book of kiddy puzzles.
Cain tilted his head, then added some weight to his steps so that Rob would hear him coming. He'd been walking lightly recently as if some invisibility now would help save him from events already passed. Rob looked up at the footfalls and canted his head, unintentionally bringing sharp attention to the empty space at his neck. Cain couldn't help but stare as he moved to the cupboard and began searching around for something good; any alcohol in the house would have to be the Yates', as Abel didn't eat or drink and Holly was too young for his brother to have considered even keeping up the appearance.
"Couldn't sleep, either?" asked Rob, attention turning back down to the maze asking him to help a bunny slipper find its mate on the other end.
Having found something strong enough that wasn't going to make him leave snobby looks in the Yates' direction come the morning, Cain got out a glass and poured a generous finger before he sat down opposite Rob. "Sleep's overrated. What's keeping you up?"
"Nothing, just don't sleep well every now and then. There it is," he muttered to himself, apparently actually invested in his work.
"Coffee helps with that," Cain said mildly, unable to keep his eyes off what he could see of Rob's neck. That was his fault. This whole thing was his fault and now he had been locked out of trying to fix it. Abel was furious, the Enforcers beyond his reach in their current tizzy of fixing the problem, and Cain could only sit back and watch. "Does it freak you out to know you're an abomination to death?"
Rob paused, put his pencil down, slowly looked up at Cain. "Not as much as you'd think," he said slowly. "It's what they're doing by keeping us here and away from, you know, living that bugs us."
Cain sipped at his drink, hand clenched about the glass precariously. It didn't matter if it shattered, save for the sound that might wake someone, and at this point he'd almost relish bringing someone into the misery with him... unless it was Holly. She was only a few generations removed from him and he didn't have the heart to fuck up another part of his family right now. "Sorry about that," he said into his glass.
"Yours isn't the sorry we want." Rob spoke for Angie, too. That was how those two worked, trusting each other to speak for themselves on the whole but respecting each other to have their individualities, too.
Cain wished he even had that much with Abel right now. His hand came down a little too hard on the countertop, and Rob grimaced at the sound. Cain stared at the book between them, already tracing out the three different solutions to pair bunny slipper with bunny slipper before he looked back up to Rob. "Yeah, it is. They want me to keep you out of the loop because blah blah paranoia, but this one's pretty big: if those Clockless assholes hadn't taken me two years ago, you wouldn't be here. That part is my fault."
Rob suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Is that what you two have been fighting about? Whether you're guilty for being abducted?" he asked. The touchy-feely thing was more Angie's side of it, and Cain could tell it was making Rob uncomfortable to have some feelings thrust upon him, as well. Tough. Rob walked into the Death Erasers' trap and had his clock erased, so he could deal with some fucking responsibility for currently throwing the world into an unhinged, under-the-surface chaos. "Because... that's bullshit."
Wait, what?
Cain looked at Rob for a moment, searching, and saw what he was afraid of. He shook his head, abandoned his drink, and stood. "'Fraid not, kid," he said. "You've still got time, plenty time to learn, but here's the thing: no one else was in control of that but me. Maybe not the kidnapping, but I chose to deal with it on my own when I shouldn't have, even after I saw what they were doing. I'm going to go get some air. Tell Abel you tried to stop me if he gets mad," he added, not really wanting to cause more complications in the house than there already were.
With that said, he grabbed his shoes and jacket by the door and left. At least they'd found his car by now.
First-person: Wow, things have changed a bit since I was... awake last. I think? Looks like I've lost some time but I'm not sure how much. Which is more than a little worrying. Anyone still here who recognizes me?
If not, well, my name's Jacob Kane. Last I remember we'd just finished cleaning up Malicant and woke up after the whole debacle. Kind of a weird time to blank out considering we'd been asleep for a year anyway, actually... I guess it doesn't matter. What happened's happened.