expiationlogs | (open) i went through my list of friends and found i had no one to tell

Who: Ange Ushiromiya and YOU!
Where: All over Aldrip.
What: Ange is dealing with the aftermath of the Gnosia event-- and worse so than she's pretending to be.
Warnings: A chance of talk of mental illness (mostly depression, mixed in with some complex abandonment trauma) and death (in regards to the recent event).

[ It's not like Ange hasn't dealt with anything in this place, really. She's been here for over a year now, and there have been plenty of things before that really shook her to the core - especially that dumb maze from a long while ago now, and everything that had appeared in it. But the most recent event might have been the wildest thing yet. It was very reminiscent of the games back home, which sure didn't help. Even though her family might not have been on the line this time around, watching her friends be on the line was practically just as bad.

And now.. the town is normal again. And they're expected to go on like the usual.

So Ange tries to do just that - even if something threatens to fester below. ]

( a. come across ange - open to all! )

[ Maybe you're coming across one of the more quiet and empty parts of town, or maybe right outside town, where you may have found someone who set up a little shooting range - even if it's not much more than a single target standing there in an empty field or park.

The sight that might be more surprising - if you recognize the girl - is Ange standing there, holding a bow as she's staring at the target, looking rather focused. It's been a long, long time since she bothered to practice archery before giving up on it, so the sight of her doing it again is certainly new to most people. (And not inspired at all by a specific person being on her mind, what do you mean--) She pulls back the string before releasing the arrow. It flies at the target, and..

.. It only hits one of the outer rings.

The girl mutters something under her breath, her steps more like stomps as she heads over to the target to retrieve the arrow, pulling it out. As she turns around to go back to where she was standing a moment ago to perhaps go for a second attempt, she'll spot you right there. She frowns, speaking up with a: ]

What are you looking at?

[ Is she embarrassed? A little more touchy than the usual, considering she doesn't seem to be wearing her poker face or her usual emotionless tone when she spoke up like that? Who knows. ]

( b. ange comes across you - only for existing cr! )

[ For once, Ange doesn't totally isolate in the face of what happened during the event. It's almost as if she learned something, ssshh.

Which means that at some point during the days right after the town returns back to normal, you may find Ange reaching out to you if she knows you. She'll be at your door if she knows where you live, but if she doesn't, she may have sent you a text to come meet up with her at a cafe in town.

Either way, regardless of whether you're greeting her at your doorstep or in the cafe, the girl scowls and immediately starts with: ]

Everything that happens in this place is such bullshit.

[ Okay, hi, hello to you too, Ange-- ]

( ooc: feel free to hit me up with either brackets or prose, i will match! or if you'd like to wildcard this or ask for a custom starter, feel free to let me know too, i'm very flexible! )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ethlyn did know that Claude was a Guardian Angel, just as she had been a Doctor--they'd sat together working out how best to deploy themselves during that terrible week. But she's not sure why Ange says it with such significance, until she explains.]

He did? [Ethlyn leans back in her chair and shakes her head. And he'd been so pragmatic when they were strategizing.

She finds herself wanting to smile. Here she thought Claude was... well... smarter than she and her family had been. But no, he can make "foolish" decisions like anyone else. Decisions of impulse and sentiment.] ...Don't feel guilty. If he wanted to make a different choice, he would have.

Yeah, well-- [ Ange's expression turns more complicated. The bridge of her nose wrinkles until it looks like she's almost pouting, and then she forces out: ] Maybe it just means he's a dumbass.

[ It's clear she doesn't mean that. It just seems like she has a lot of emotions around everything that happened - as Ethlyn herself surely has too. As anyone must have, with how wild that week has been.

And survivor's guilt has always been such a particularly rough thing for Ange to deal with that she doesn't know how to express it in any other way than this - though she isn't mad at Claude at all. Only at herself.

There's a slight pause, and then the girl adds: ]

.. sorry, I shouldn't say that around you. [ No cursing around Ethlyn!! She respects the other just a little bit too much for it.. ] It-- It is dumb though! He should've used it on you, if not just because you could have helped people who got injured during all that chaos. You're way more useful than I am.

[Ethlyn can't help but laugh when Ange apologizes for her language.]

I promise you, I'm not offended by swearing. I used to be a battlefield healer, remember? Wounded soldiers aren't exactly decorous when they're lamenting their state. [Sometimes they would try, knowing that their doctor was a noblewoman, but a hasty correction was typically the best they could do.] I can defend myself. The Gnosia were a unique threat, to be sure, but we had worked out a strategy for me to do my job as safely as I could.

He helped you because you're his friend. And it seems like he's more sentimental than he likes to admit.

[So, yeah. Sometimes that does mean being a dumbass about your own life.]

[ Ange likes to think she's someone who's tough. Someone who can hold her own if she has to, if not just because life has taught her that she has to.

And yet Ethlyn waltzes over her so easily. She hardly even has to do a thing. All she does is say these few simple things, and Ange finds herself speechless, like she isn't even sure what to say. It feels so natural for a power like that to be used on Ethlyn instead for an entire variety of reasons, and yet Ethlyn somehow manages to make it sound like the way it went down is just the natural course of things.

It's like Ange shrinks on the spot a little, looking uncharacteristically shy. Like she doesn't even know what to say in the face of things. ]

.. It's still dumb. [ She manages to say after a few moments. Even her voice sounds so much tinier than the usual, and she doesn't dare look directly at Ethlyn. ]

So many people died. That should've been me, too.

[ Rather than someone useful. So many useful people must have been among the dead, and yet she's living once more, at the expense of a friend. ]

I think he could have done a better job of protecting himself. I'm going to have to give him a hard time about it next time I see him.

[Ange is avoiding her gaze, but Ethlyn continues to look at her. There is much about her friend that she doesn't know, she reflects. What she has said about her life before sounds so fantastical that it's hard for Ethlyn to wrap her mind around.

But for all that, there is something about Ange that is so... normal. She's a girl who acts so much older than she is, most of the time, and then there are moments like this. Ethlyn understands that very well.]

You didn't do anything wrong by surviving. If you look for what should have happened or the sense in it... it doesn't work. Aldrip was a battlefield during that week. Things that should happen, things that make sense, don't happen on battlefields.

[ Ange exhales at that answer.

But she doesn't answer right away. Maybe it's because a part of her knows that Ethlyn is right, even if she's still having a hard time accepting that fact. Sometimes things just happen that can't be helped. Just like when her family died. Sometimes you can't stop something, no matter how much you might want to do so. ]

Then what do we do? [ She asks - slowly. So very slowly. It's like she doesn't want to ask the question, since it makes Ange feel so vulnerable, but she drags it out of her all the same.

Because if she isn't going to ask Ethlyn, then who would she ask? And if she didn't ask anyone at all, how would she cope? ]

How do we deal with everything that happened?

[How do we deal with everything that happened.

What do we do.

Ethlyn finds herself thinking of her brother Sigurd. Forced to fight his best friend and bring about his death--a death that fell on his shoulders whether or not he wielded the blade--only for his own country to betray him and declare him a traitor, a party to regicide. And to lose his wife... there is a twist of guilt in Ethlyn's gut as she remembers her inability to save Deirdre from the robed mages. She remembered it so well, how he had thrown down his sword and demanded to know what he had even been fighting for all this time.

Ange is quieter, more restrained, but Ethlyn can feel the same sort of desperation and despair in her question.]

...It's a good question. [Ethlyn hadn't been able to answer Sigurd then, but he had fought on anyway--fought on to his death, as she now knows. She hopes such a grim fate doesn't await them all.

But she would like to have an answer for Ange, and for herself too.] I know we can't give up. Claude protected you over and over, and that meant you survived. I cured the infected man who killed him, so he survived too.

Day by day, if we are lucky, we survive. And we use what we learned by surviving to do better the next time, and the next. We keep helping each other even when it's hard.

[ It's a difficult answer for Ange to parse. After all, she's never cared about survival. She only did it because it was necessary to continue chasing after the truth behind what happened to her family - and once she got that? It'd become entirely unnecessary, right?

It's not like this place really gives her the motivation to survive either, when it's constantly throwing stuff like this at them. When it'd be so much easier to just not have to deal with any of it, Ange thinks.

But.. she thinks of what Claude told her, both when he had used his power to protect her and when he came back after he died. She thinks about what Ethlyn told her after Ange told her that she wanted to die, she thinks about what Ethlyn is saying now.

.. she thinks about how kindly the other has treated her, all this time. ]

Ethlyn, is it..

[ ...

It's a little hard to ask. A little scary. But considering she already forced out the last question, she might as well try her best for this one too. ]

It's not.. a bad thing to want to survive just to be able to spend a few more moments with certain people, is it..? Is that weird?

(open) i went through my list of friends and found i had no one to tell

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