the littlest edgelord (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inconsequence) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2017-11-25 08:52 pm
inconsequence) wrote in thisavrou_log2017-11-25 08:52 pm
points to spinal chord on brain diagram [open]
Who: Chara and YOU
When: 11/23 - 11/24
Where: Literally all around Avagi this child is wandering in a disoriented post-fight daze
What: Chara fought in a trial. Chara got a prize. No one is happy with this.
Warnings: Emotional distress probable, in addition to the usual Chara warnings.
The temples began to sing.
They emerged bloodied and ragged along the edges, one hand clasped around the rust-brown stains fringing every tear in their clothing. One side of their hair has become uneven where a hank of it was roughly and sloppily cut away mid-combat. They limp. Their eyes are glazed with hunger, with emptiness, with exhaustion. Their motions are stiff and automatic. Whenever someone draws near to them, they flinch and hold ready, a blade of red steel gleaming in their hand. A smile tears over their features in a blaze of forced and painted-on glee.
They emerged from the Trial of Life victorious, in a manner of speaking - in a very loose manner of speaking. They emerged from the Trial of Life, having not died or fled, and thus are eligible for something of a prize.
That is when the temples began to sing.
They ignite with a soft blue glow, ethereal, illuminating their surroundings in a cool sweep of runic light. The light takes root inside them, nestling like a seed in the center of their chest; not patience-blue, not integrity-blue, and certainly not determination-red, but something else entirely. It aches in solemn acknowledgment of itself. The child's eyes squeeze shut. The blood has begun to hammer in their ears anew, as if rejuvenated enough to feel like it ought to redouble its efforts to spill out from their torn veins.
The hum pressing across their ears has begun to vibrate in their bones.
As they cross through the portal's bridge of light back to Avagi, the whispers and fragments of other people's thoughts begin to trail after them, silver-tinted specters of other people's thoughts.
When: 11/23 - 11/24
Where: Literally all around Avagi this child is wandering in a disoriented post-fight daze
What: Chara fought in a trial. Chara got a prize. No one is happy with this.
Warnings: Emotional distress probable, in addition to the usual Chara warnings.
The temples began to sing.
They emerged bloodied and ragged along the edges, one hand clasped around the rust-brown stains fringing every tear in their clothing. One side of their hair has become uneven where a hank of it was roughly and sloppily cut away mid-combat. They limp. Their eyes are glazed with hunger, with emptiness, with exhaustion. Their motions are stiff and automatic. Whenever someone draws near to them, they flinch and hold ready, a blade of red steel gleaming in their hand. A smile tears over their features in a blaze of forced and painted-on glee.
They emerged from the Trial of Life victorious, in a manner of speaking - in a very loose manner of speaking. They emerged from the Trial of Life, having not died or fled, and thus are eligible for something of a prize.
That is when the temples began to sing.
They ignite with a soft blue glow, ethereal, illuminating their surroundings in a cool sweep of runic light. The light takes root inside them, nestling like a seed in the center of their chest; not patience-blue, not integrity-blue, and certainly not determination-red, but something else entirely. It aches in solemn acknowledgment of itself. The child's eyes squeeze shut. The blood has begun to hammer in their ears anew, as if rejuvenated enough to feel like it ought to redouble its efforts to spill out from their torn veins.
The hum pressing across their ears has begun to vibrate in their bones.
As they cross through the portal's bridge of light back to Avagi, the whispers and fragments of other people's thoughts begin to trail after them, silver-tinted specters of other people's thoughts.
[Chara scored the empathy reward for their participation in the Trial of Life, meaning that, to quote the info post: others stay inside their body, but gain a sense of those around them. This manifests not as telepathic knowledge of their thoughts, but an empathic resonance—ghost-vision showing their emotions in stark clarity.]
[This more or less gives them the ability to know and feel anything your character is experiencing emotionally so that's you know fantastic. Feel free to tag in with prose or brackets; I'll match you! Let me know here or over atarrpee if you want a closed starter or something more specific!]
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[Still calm. Composed. He has to be -- for their sake. He holds up his right arm. Bare and metallic in the hallway light. In stark contrast to the rest of him.]
[They've spoken about it before, the two of them. There's little hesitation in drawing attention to it for understanding's sake.]
You don't think so?
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[They spread their arms, briefly, and let their eyes gape open like black holes. Let the thick dribbles of rot gum their open mouth and flow freely from their pitch-dark irises. They allow their true visage to creep out from beneath that unkempt hair, stinking of long-dead things, of compost, of mold, of dirt.]
[Disgusting, like them.]
I'm a memory of something long dead. I'm an echo of child that was never meant to live this long. I'm a collection of numbers in someone else's life.
[Do they look like a monster someone else made?]
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[He makes himself stay calm. Makes himself focus on that memory of triumph, that place secure and braced against everything else. The fortress of the Lion's making. This is ... a point they're trying to make. Isn't it?]
[Why do you care?]
[They don't want him to. Do they?]
... you're supposed to be a memory. My teammates are supposed to be bad pilots, cowards, or attitude problems. One of them is supposed to be an apocalypse.
But they're not.
I'm supposed to be a weapon. Supposed to be part of the enemy. And I'm not.
You don't have to be, either.
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[You wake and remember. Don't forget; you're an atrocity to god! Don't forget; you ruined everything by eating a flower! Don't forget; you consistently make life harder and more difficult for everyone around you, and nothing you say or do now will alleviate the pain of what you once forced them all to endure!]
[Don't forget.]
[Their eyes return to their typical rosy hue. Streaks of that oily black remain, dribbling off the edges of their cheeks. Like some other kind of moisture that would cling there, after an excess of emotion.]
It still haunts you.
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[Maybe later, it will be. Somewhere down the line, he'll figure out how to master the nightmares. Set them aside, and stop dreaming of that day in the depths of the castle. Or the hundreds of other moments surfacing while he was unconscious -- bright lights overhead, dust in your lungs, held down and examined and prodded and cut and broken and reformed and]
[Calm.]
And yes. It does. Every day.
[Let them see it, how raw everything feels, reserved and held back, like a photograph shown, instead of a wide-screen movie.]
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[How does he do it? Much in the same way they do, they imagine. Only instead of smiles and barbed words, he converts every waking moment of that nightmare into a tired tranquility that has less to do with an internal sense of peace and more to do with the fact that there are so many other people out there he feels are owed his time and his attention.]
[He himself hardly registers as one of them.]
[It is too blisteringly, bitingly familiar in too many ways.]
How do you do it? [It's less of a challenge; not a gauntlet thrown or words spat cruelly out.]
[It's a request, quiet and uneven.]
[A plea.]
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[Honest as always. Even with the other thoughts running through his mind. The memories and the hurt and the flashbacks threatening the edges of his vision. Even as he fights, still, fighting it all down for their sake. To try and keep them from being overwhelmed by his problems.]
[Forcing down calm.]
[His head hurts. He does it anyway.]
People are counting on me to get through it. They want me to lean on them, when I have to. They... keep offering me a hand.
When I need it.
[The way he will keep offering to Chara. If they need it.] I guess I just keep trying. For their sake. Because they're important to me.
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[That twists their expression in such a way that implies those words weren't meant to be uttered aloud. Not to him, not like this, and certainly not in this instant. To witness behavior in parallel with a different set of circumstances, a different structure, a different point of origin, is a little like seeing the back of your head in the mirror.]
[It feels wrong.]
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... it's easier for me to start with them. With my friends, family.
If I do that long enough. I'm hoping I can work my way up to me.
[A shake of his head, a hollow, exhausted laugh.]
That probably doesn't make any sense, does it?
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[It's quieter.]
[It's the gentle acceptance that no one should or would ask you so much as your name. The quiet knowledge that if you have nothing to give, you bear nothing of value, and you are, yourself, worthless. The solemn abandonment of everything that defines you for the sake of what others wish instead, because if no one wants it, why hold onto it?]
[The similarities, upon recollection, are glowering.]
[They should have noted it sooner.]
Perhaps it makes too much sense.
[They do, after all, know others possessed of the same Achilles' Heel.]
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[And there it is. There's the question he has to ask. All this soul-bearing has to be useful, right? Has to make things a little better for someone else. For Chara. After all, why else would you do it?]
[Not to help yourself.]
[He doesn't know how to do that. Maybe he'd started, once, but when Angela left, when she disappeared, so did that knowledge. So did that outlet. There's no other reason now, but to help someone else.]
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[They need...time. Time to be alone in the center of their own thoughts without someone else’s fears or regrets or angers trespassing upon their own. Nothing about this is easily clarified, and it does not clarify itself either. Mostly it burns cold, like a dying star.]
[They cannot say.]
Has it helped you?
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[It is. It truly is. It's all right and it's understandable and accepted. Even if they aren't helped by what he's said, even if they come out of their time unchanged, it's all right.]
[All you can do is try. And keep trying.]
Helping other people usually takes my mind off things, at least. [He shifts a shoulder in a shrug.] In a way, it does.
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[He's very determined, isn't he? He's determined to help, no matter the personal cost. He's always - tried. He's terrible with names, and he's terrible with jokes, and he cannot help but gather children to him like moth to a flame, and he pours himself out to cover for the fact that he does not know how else to help.]
[None of it is all right. None of it is all right, even if the tranquility running beneath his thoughts says that it is.]
...I interrupted you. You were going somewhere.
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[That goal sort of faded out while they'd been speaking. Along with the headache, the feeling of general disorientation. He shakes his head, pressing his palm to it for a moment.]
... bed. If you can believe that.
[He'd been asleep for days, according to the others. But it doesn't feel like it.]
But it's all right. I'll get there.
Are you going to be okay? For now?
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[It's a little shrill. A little wobbling. A little poorly contained. Just like them, at the moment - far from perfect, far from veiled. They cannot quite rake all the pieces of themself into something presentable, just now.]
I have no idea.
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[He closes his eyes.]
[His chest hurts, something inside aching for them. For their sake. Remembering how much he'd wanted, in places, to be able to just shatter. To fall apart, and not have that space, not have that chance. And how quickly it happened, once someone opened up that door.]
[He doesn't draw closer to them -- out of respect for their space. But he does shift. Sitting against the wall, leaning against it.]
It's okay. [It will be okay. I'll stay here, just for a while if they need a presence.] It's okay, Chara. You... don't have to know.
[He won't help if he's a mess. If he's trying not to fly apart, too.]
[Focus.]
[Calm.]
[Going back to that steady place. Eyes still closed, focusing on that memory. For ... for both their sake. And his.]
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[Do none of them ask why it is they always laugh? It's certainly some measure of their depravity, to be sure - some instinct that displays their cruel nature well and truly, for all to see. What sort of child laughs at another's pain? What sort of child laughs at such inappropriate times? Do they take pleasure in this, in knowing they are all doomed?]
[They must! Is there any other explanation?]
You're trying so very hard to keep this all under wraps. You understand that I realize this, yes?
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[His head tilts back against the wall, eyes shut.]
I know. [Quietly. Tiredly.] But it can't hurt to try and calm down, anyway.
[Breathing slowly to calm a racing pulse, eyes shut against a headache. Old hat, by now.]
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[Look at them, standing rigid, firm, uncompromising, unblinking. The tension clenching their shoulders, curling their hands around the edges of their sweater and tearing at the threads and fray thing green fabric - that's just secondary.]
You aren't even doing it for my benefit; you can't be. [There would be no point if he already knows they can hear it.] Why do you continue to bother?
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[And he's never fine when he writes it off like that. But now, he's just going to lean against the wall. Sitting cross-legged as if it were the most natural position in the world. Every ounce of him doing his best to feel calm. To feel at ease. If they can feel what he feels, it's bound to help somehow, isn't it?]
Because maybe it'll help one of us. Eventually. [He quiets for a few breaths.] I'm not going to stop you from walking away, Chara.
If you want to, I won't stop you.
[They know that. Don't they?]
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[Stay. Or leave.]
[Their smile is too skewed to belong to them.]
I'm interfering with what I'm assuming is the weekly allotment of four hours you allow yourself.
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[He will absolutely not put his own mishap on anyone else's shoulders. Much less Chara's. They'd just happened to be here. He'd wandered down this hall. Noting purposeful on anyone's part.]
[A shrug.]
Chara -- I mean it. [And he does. As much as he means space is huge, or any other undeniable fact.] You don't have to stay, and you don't have to go.
It's up to you.
[Do you want me to stop? Do you want to be left alone?]
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[And they know that he means it.]
[That's the worst part of it. Adults aren't supposed to offer you choices. They aren't supposed to make you feel - this. Like there are no strings, no emotional ties, no consequences. They aren't supposed to reward you for being like this.]
They've expected him to wake up and see them for what they really are for months now. For months.]
[Is that day simply never coming?]
I cannot understand these feelings anymore.
But you really ought to be getting on.
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[Not if he knows himself like he does. It takes a lot for him to change his mind -- about people. About individuals. Keith comes to mind again -- the way he'd looked when he'd been assured everything was all right. That nothing had changed between them.]
[Chara's situation is probably wildly different.]
[But he's still here for them.]
Probably. If I could stand up.
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