<a class="postlink" href="http://i40.tinypic.com/w1pr46.jpg">[ img ]</a><br/><br/><br/>-0-0-0-<br/><br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-weight: bold">February the Eighth, 2034.  New York </span></span><br/><br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Tonight marks my eighty-second attempt to cleanse, and Justice is still with me.  Where he came from, I may never know.  Where he resides, whether in the darkest shadows of my mind or in the slumbering fiber of my soul... is a mystery... How to speak to him, I know.  But is he listening?  Even now, watching me write...  Guiding my hand.... The questions plague me, driving away sleep.  This is always when he comes.  When I am too weak to resist.  He controls me, luring me in with promises of power.  I curse the day I gave him entrance, and wish for one when I may be rid of him forever.  But how?</span><br/><br/><br/>Slamming the leather-bound journal shut with more force than was strictly necessary, Gideon pushed his chair away from the desk and crammed his cigarette into the ashtray on the table, grinding it down into dust.  The remnants of his last attempted cleanse--a devil's circle drawn on the floor, a mortar and pestle, a phial of his own blood on the nightstand--reminded him of his latest failure.  Pulling his hands through his auburn hair and down over his aching eyes, he breathed out heavily.  Weariness was dragging heavy and cold at his limbs, fogging his thoughts.  He hadn't slept in two days, and the lack of rest was not as easy to ignore now as it had once been.<br/><br/>Tall and lean, Gideon wore his hair longer than most these days, down past his ears, and several silver rings peeked between strands from his ears.   He wore dark jeans that had clearly seen better days and a relatively new white t-shirt.  He wasn't particularly broad, but he was muscular, blessed with a strength of figure that generally kept him from harassment, even in the parts of town where he tended to lurk.  These days, nowhere was safe.<br/><br/>He'd lived alone, between this hotel room and a hundred others like it, since he was elven years old.  Before then he'd switched schools several times after getting suspended for fighting, using unlicensed magic, and causing trouble.  All of that had never bothered him as much as it seemed to bother other peopleâ€”his parents in particularâ€”but in his mind, he had nothing to prove.  He was who he was and if that turned others away, as it had so many, then he supposed he was better off alone.  It wasn't as if he'd ever been what you could call upper-class.  He was now a hunted magister, he was inexperienced, and most unforgivably, he was a savant.  Any one of those things would have made him an outcast on it's own; add them together and it really made him look like a freak.  He didn't even need to get started on his questionable sexuality, never mind Justice, his own personal mind-squatter.<br/><br/>Granted, all those things did tend to make his life a bit more.... complicated.  But he was alive, so he couldn't exactly complain.<br/><br/>The sounds made by his worn-out combat boots were muted on the thin carpet, but after so long sitting in silence the noise sounded like gunshots in his ears as he walked quickly across the small room to the single window.  He pulled the faded curtain aside with long fingers, gazing out into the night anxiously. He couldn't have said what exactly he was looking for, but it wasn't there. The city looked quiet and calm, a false front to hide the bitter temperatures and biting wind.  Puddles left by last night's downpour reflected a still, cloudless sky and a moon nearly-full.  It was a night prime for magic, but he squashed that thought down quickly.  He didn't need to go looking for trouble, but he was craving a run.  Just a simple run...  Did he dare risk it?<br/><br/>Maybe it wasn't safe, but he couldn't stay cooped up in that hotel room one moment longer.  Not without sleep; not without temptation and wading deeper into the dredges of his own mind.  Snatching his black leather jacket off of the back of his chair, Gideon changed quickly.  He collected his keys and touched the emerald green amulet at his neck for the simple comfort of knowing it was still there.<br/><br/>Satisfied, he headed out.