[Two time travelers at it as they keep on resetting the time or going further back in the past so that they can 'fix' something or finally beat one another. At some point, the timeline would get completely fucked though, right? It's a little hard to fully wrap his mind around it, but like a lot of other thoughts he's been having here and there that don't feel comfortable, it fades away.]
Probably just waiting for you. [He smirks again, remembering Charles just... hanging out at the mansion somewhere.] He's also just adjusting living in a big mansion and feeling alive.
[...Why did he say that? That's odd, right? Of course Charles is alive.]
[It was quite the scene. Richard looked radiant in the white, bathed in the sunlight that reflected off of dark hair, and standing above the dirty filthy masses that begged and pleaded for his guidance. So this was the light that the younger man sought, was it? Adoration of the wailing trembling masses?
Silco eased through the crowd with their upraised hands, their bleating calls like sheep, and his clothing stood out as a stark difference from the plain woven fabrics, black on red accented with gold. He pushed forwards, sliding between people like an impeding darkness as his black eye with its glowing orange iris pinned his lover with a constant stare, as if to say "I know who you really are, Richard, Duke of Gloucester".
The corners of his lips curled up in a sneering smirk, and he slide to the front of the unwashed masses with his hands in his coat pockets. He stood at the front of the crowd looking up at Richard with that knowing smirk on his lips. The future king and the kingsmaker.
King! King! King!]
Enjoy the moment, Richard. This may be the only one that you enjoy before you spend a lifetime defending this feeling, chasing for it again.
She watches him for a moment, stroking Kieran's hair lightly. The stuttering gives her pause, making her tilt her head and try to determine if the stuttering was just how he talked or if it was nervousness.
"Yes, I'm aware. This seems to work much like the Fade did back in my world. I assumed since I am a mage I had a better grasp of it, but it looks like it's not limited to me. Have you been wandering long?"
(he listens, although it takes a while for the words to fully process in his mind. with his eyes closed, he bends a little to press a kiss to the deceased's forehead before he stands. weakly, almost like his body cannot support all that he carries, slow steps with hands stuck in his pockets until he is in front of yu.
he can't look up to see him, but this is a conversation for the living.)
Dunno. I just don't--
(this is a nightmare, and the confirmation is the fact that his vision becomes impaired by the tears that flood his eyes. a sob, before he looks even more towards the floor, as to hide them.
he deserves this. that's all that he can think, that this is his nightmare, and this is not a fraction of whatever punishment he deserves.)
Everything always happens because you all can't. None of you could ever let me go, and for what? I'm not at all worth all this fucking trouble. He should have just put me off life support. It'd have saved everyone a lot of death and despair, including you.
[This was, quite honestly, the last place that Silco wanted to be when he opened his blue eye and looked around the scenes that paraded their way beyond him. He knew whose memories these were without having to move, and he remained a looming shadow in the background as the bodies were paraded by, a sneer twisting his lips even as he actually made a point of not drawing attention to himself. It wasn't survival instinct.
He stared at the bodies of the dead boys. Vander's little gaggle of children. Vander's priorities. The Lanes, the undercity could rot away under the man's feet as long as those children remained safe and sound, and Silco hated him for it. He who had been tossed aside like garbage, nearly drowned then his face rotting off, abandoned like these small bodies. Adults and children alike died young. It was the one constant of the undercity. He hadn't intended for the children to die; they were a piece in the game to bring Vander to heel because they were so important. The cause the man might fight for....
Then there was Vander. The hulking beast of a man who was altered and twisted; this memory was only confirmation of what Jinx had told him. It stirred in him a deep welling anger. Why him? Why had Silco not endured the same, brought back around to continue his final ambitions and yet, Vander the coward became such a beast? From snarling drooling beast to a golden metal abomination. Well, well, even now the big bastard just continued in his failure to die.
Yet, it was Felicia and Connol that drew him from the shadows as the girl cried. He stared at them, and her memory of them reflected his own. He remembered that day like it was burned on the inside of his eyelids; the children hadn't supposed to be there, had snuck onto the bridge in the chaotic aftermath when it had been scrambling Zaunites tripping over their dead or dying themselves. Enforcers clearing the bridge.
His hands remained in his coat pockets, hiding that they were clenched and his nails biting into his palms. He should be staring at Vander and Jinx, but his eyes were glued on the pair. He'd known them a long time; they were not the first to fall, but their deaths were the catalyst for everything shattering apart. He wondered if Vander had ever told them how it happened; Silco had been the one closer to them.
The silence of the dream was only punctuated by Vi's crying, and for once in his damn life, Silco didn't make a point of twisting the knife.]
He died first. [He spoke quietly.] Bullet took him in the leg and as he fell, another through the left eye. He was dead before he hit the ground. [He'd been about to surge forward at the time, ready to slide into Vander's shadow as he instinctively did since youth. Connol!! Connol, NO!
Felicia's surprised call pierced the cacophony of chaotic noise. Ahead of him, Vander turned, twisted to look back to assess, the wall of his body thinning as the bullets that were meant for Vander passed through the space he had just turned from and they struck Felicia in the chest. Silco remembered her staggering, Vander yelling and his mouth opening as he reached for her. Blood trailed from the left side of her mouth as Silco had briefly caught her wrist as if he might pull her out of the way, but it was too late and her hand slipped through his fingers as she fell upon Connol, twitching as she bled out within seconds.
Heart pierced.
The heart of his and Vander's revolution winked out in a single moment....]
Felicia died soon after. Two bullets to the chest... to her heart. She didn't suffer.
[Silco stared at them where they currently lay at his feet. His expression was closed, and for once, he didn't belabor the point. Short explanation hiding the old pain. She had brought out of the best in them, had given them permission to hope, to dance, to drink, to love, to rally the undercity....]
She was a good woman. She... [His lip twitched, as if he were about to say something foul and distasteful.] ...loved you and your sister very much.
Morrigan blinks slowly, both to blink back the tears and also to wake herself up from this. "You're..." She blinks again and then jerks back, eyes going a bit wide. She looks around and then stands, looking irritated.
"The damnable place!" She moves from him, crossing her arms over her chest, rubbing her arms and taking a deep breath. "Of all the memories. One of the most bittersweet I have." She glances at him, not sure what to say for a long moment.
A clue! The way out of here! Anything along those lines!
[ Apparently Ange isn't too picky, which might help, but..
On the other hand, her apparently not having something definite in mind might actually do the opposite of that. Since it makes it sound like they're running around for nothing, only the sheer possibility of something, but Ange doesn't slow down. It's like her own words don't discourage her in the least. ]
There has to be something! I just haven't found it yet..!
[She blinks, considers for a second, and then clasps her hands on either side of her face, making her eyes wide and expression vulnerable and innocent, the ingénue just stepping onto the stage]
But I'm just an innocent young girl. Would he really hurt me? [She blinks a very times, tears welling up on command as she adopts the look of a terrified girl in desperate need of help]
It's those words that slowly bring Scott to, well, not really reality, but it throws off the veil that's been covering his mind since he suddenly found Mikey in this empty space. This is just a strange illusion? Mikey didn't actually hurt Yu again, this is just a memory or nightmare of what happened before.
Except. This is also more than what he was expecting. Because he remembers Yu back at the tower, alive and with those marks, but he said that Mikey just choked him. He didn't mention anything else or that something beyond that might've happened. But as he stares at Yu's still body, the truth is nearly glaring straight at him and something in Scott twists, anger and frustration, along with some betrayal clawing in him.]
What... what really happened back then? [His voice is quiet. Strained. Maybe he's just jumping to conclusions.]
[A statement said softly, without judgment. Whatever could have happened, should have happened-- this is where he is now. Where they are now. Yu has to turn, a bit, away from the brutal tableau of his own body on the floor. That could have been him at any other time, too. Adachi could have shot. He could have given into Izanami's curses. But he didn't. So the question is-- what now, as Mikey said.
Yu can't ask, though. Not right now. Instead, he rubs a hand over the back of his neck, every atom of his existence wanting to reach forward and wipe those tears away. He forces himself into stillness instead.]
It's hard to let go. It's why I never even started, for a long time. But... [Notebooks empty of friends' notes and pictures. A contact list in his phone with very few numbers. And now-- here-- this. He feels at once the pain of having lost and the pain of holding on. This is hard.] You don't always get to decide whether you're worth it. You don't get to decide who else cares. Even the people who care...don't always decide that.
[Love isn't something you feel, it's something you do. And he can't stop himself from it.]
(much like scott's vision, everything turns red, hues dancing and shifting in tones of scarlet, all burred out if not for the people that breathe in it. scott might feel that it's fine to remove his glasses, to see clear when it's all the same, a meshing of experiences... and manjiro does not even notice it. instead, he's listening to the tone of scott's voice, one he had learned to dread.
... and it does nothing to him right now.)
I killed him. I killed him, and then I was home, free from the thing that made me kill him in the first place... Would you believe it, Summers? That he still shares a bed with me? Wakes up in the morning with a smile on his face? I don't understand it either.
(the thing is that it wasn't just yu who had fallen in the hands of manjiro sano. too many have left him, each timeline saved by one brave boy who too met his end through manjiro's curse. the bodies drop one by one, and they're easily identifiable to yu due to photographs, or the video cassettes manjiro watches when he's missing his people. on their sides, all the toman members, including the ones manjiro loves the most, baji, kazutora, draken, all dead in various gruesome ways - and unfortunately, all real in a reality or another.
and takemichi, with a katana stuck in the middle of his chest. he can't look, but he knows they're there, he feels the guilt on his shoulders and the words don't compare to the suffering around them.
all he can do is sniff, letting the tears fall as if wiping them were an indication he was crying in the first place.
like yu doesn't know.)
I hate all of you so much.
(it's not it. he hates that he is so loved, and loves back so passionately, that this? this is the result.)
[He gets it, he thinks, as memories of his final battle surface in his mind. Each of his friends, in turn, shoving him out of the way-- Izanami's curse clawing at them, pulling them down into hell, into death-- Yosuke shoving him into a boat while a monster opens its gaping maw--]
You hate that people choose you. Choose this. It hurts. Knowing they'll make that choice.
[... Hurt is a mild word for it; he never felt as devastated, as terrified, as he did in those moments, and the weaker parts of him thought-- wouldn't it be easier if you never made them do this? Wouldn't it be better if they didn't care?
[ their arms looping together makes viktor let out a small sigh, content and comfortable and happy like this.
he gives a halting nod to octavian's mention of family, before realising they're not looking at each other and thus the nod is all but equal to silence; so, ] Yes.
[ and the offer, well — that creates a fresh burst of warmth in his chest, because yes, of course he's noticed that octavian doesn't place too much notice on others, and so the fact he is offering this freely, even asking to hear it, any and all... yes, it means a lot to him, its significance and importance are not lost on him. ]
Yes, [ he says again, a little softer, ] I will tell you. Someday. I would rather not...
[ burden this moment, he thinks, but lets the sentence trail off, trusting octavian to understand without it being completed. instead, he is silent for a moment, watches as the sun starts to disappear fully, leaving the sky a beautiful red-purple colour.
finally, when he speaks, it is with a kind of quiet nostalgia, ] My parents made me the uniform for the Academy. It is exceedingly hard to be admitted if you are from the Undercity. They will look at your exams and your application and only see your name. I would have been discarded immediately. So my parents made me a uniform, and one day I wore it and walked into the Academy like I belonged there. Attended lectures, took part in projects... and when I was finally found out, professor Heimerdinger had seen enough of my work to have been impressed and take me on as an assistant instead of kicking me out.
(as if yu wasn't a part of that group. if he doesn't share the same bed, as if he doesn't kiss him awake each morning, holds him to sleep, loves him, even when he has trouble to love himself. he's frustrated, his fist raising as if he could just punch yu for the audacity of describing exactly what he is doing himself.
and then he drops it. it's a long, hard road for yu to get him out of this dream, and the guilt is so heavy that it might as well drown him. he could definitely die here, and he wouldn't feel bad to be buried amongst his loved ones.)
[Relieved to be in the presence of someone who knows what they're doing, A2 quickly hands over the requested spanner. Her memory bank operates differently from an organic's mind, but the dream space circumvents any awareness of this illusion she might have, smoothly filing away the oddities of the interaction.
A2 carries herself differently here. Her hands fold demurely in front of her as she observes Heimerdinger begin his work.]
Have you built something like this before? I haven't... My Pod and I have the blueprints, but it's hard to know where to start.
[But this good thing won't end, right? A part of him just wants to blurt that out, reassure Peter, but he holds back, choosing to focus on something else.]
I'm afraid you already got the best spot around here. I mean, that's why I'm here.
[Scott motions to the ground next to him, inviting Peter to take a seat. Maybe a little harder to really get a good picture now, but it seems like his friend needs to settle down for a bit and also Scott's getting tired looking up at him. It's a mutually beneficial decision, okay!! Besides, if something starts to happen, Peter can easily get up and get the whole scoop.]
Unless you want to take pictures of students looking bored in class. [Although, getting a picture of everyone eating together at the dining room would be nice.] This is the best place to see everyone running around, maybe even using their powers. We don't have to hold back.
[Mostly. Not like Scott can shoot his optic blasts everywhere.]
[In many of their interactions, scattered across the depths of their, by now, shared memories, A2 is a ghost — a silent and foreboding wraith that fought without feeling but with dogged purpose. But those moments had only come after years of strife and being hunted down. The A2 in this dream parries the first strike of the spear with a swift block of her blade, her eyes bright with rage. The next swing of the sword comes without any interruption in flow, an aggressive move meant to close the gap her opponent's spear creates. Then another, and another — she wants to force 2-- to be on the defense. To feel the way that she does, all the time.]
You think you can kill me? No matter how many times you show up, I'll kill you, I'll kill you, you - goddamn thief! You think you can show up with my face?
[Yu gives Mikey a withering look. Come on, that look says, don't be obtuse. Mikey knows as well as anyone why Yu uses that word -- because he feels the exact same hurt, the exact same anger, directed at the people who care for him. Both of them feeling the same pain about and toward each other.]
You hate that someone who loves you gets it, too.
[Because it's harder to push people away when they understand. When they know the consequences and do it anyway. He goes on to add, even though Mikey knows this already too,] You don't like being seen any more than I do.
[It's only at that point that he looks at the fist, raised and then dropped. He's angry, Yu gathers, and it makes sense. But his expression is a little weary at the thought. So,] ... Do you really think that will help?
[There's no recognition from Scott hearing those names. It's like the cogs in his brain are turning, but nothing is actually produced. Like maybe he's heard of Bohemia, but he can't remember much about it.]
Uh, I have no idea where that is. Outside of America, right?
(great deduction, because he is seething. his face doesn't show it, hidden behind hair, and staring down, but it's almost palpable how he feels - almost as if his anger was surrounding him, an aura of regret and pain that he doesn't even know what to do with.
punching yu doesn't work. it'll add to this, certainly, so what does he have? nothing, aside from words that are swimming in his gut that he kept to himself ever since it happened.
and it snaps, like a rubber band, because his soaked face tilts up, gritting teeth and a loud volume to his voice. he's never yelled, not out of anger, not without his fists to go with it. he's lost, and he doesn't even know how to start.)
No, because-- what does help, Yuchin?! Tell me. What's the point?! What's the point of loving me so much if I destroyed everything I touched? What's the point of forgiving something that I couldn't have helped, but that-- you couldn't even look at me, Yuchin. I fought with tooth and nail to get you back-- and you-- you don't get it, because you've never killed anyone. You were never the reason why everything fell apart. No, you're the savior, the good guy, you're not-- the villain.
[ Hiei.. well. The little fire apparition would rather eat numerous inedible things rather than admit that warm feeling in his chest whenever it’s only he and Kurama alone here in the greenhouse, even if they do tend to bicker more, these days. He hasn’t quite figured out why as of yet, but it doesn’t make them any less likely to spend time with one another, even if that time was Kurama working and Hiei sleeping in a nearby tree.
The simple truth was that it was soothing for the both of them to have one another close by, a sense of safety in numbers and raw power that the both of them could choose to use if they wanted to.
Still, Scott says he likes Kurama and Hiei… well. Stares blankly in response.
In his little, non-romantic mind, Scott means that they enjoy each other’s company. That he likes having Kurama around. Which… obviously. He wouldn’t be his partner if he didn’t enjoy the redhead’s presence most of the time. He still didn’t really appreciate Kurama’s trolling, of course, but that’s a separate matter.
Anyway - Hiei’s response is very likely not what Scott may expect, brows raising under the jagan’s headband for a moment before he simply dead pans : ]
He is my partner, Scott.
[ And while he doesn’t mean romantically… well. He isn’t exactly understanding enough to clarify. ]
[The exclamation is a stake driven between them, a wall raised to divide them. Good. Bad. Hero. Villain. They're all just choices, aren't they? And that's what all of this is about -- because Yu doesn't feel, has never felt, could never feel, that those roles last forever. Fundamentally, Yu believes that even someone who uses the word villain as a descriptor can change. He's always believed this. He has to.
For his part, he absorbs the words with a neutral expression. This is Mikey's dream; his feelings, his words, his guilt. The least Yu can do is let him express it.
And-- so, too, he doesn't offer a response to most of what Mikey says. What would be the point? Telling someone that's not true, you're not bad...when has that ever changed anyone's mind? He's quiet for a moment. Thoughtful. Neutral. Some of it hurts, admittedly, but he's determined to keep that hurt to himself. He can deal with it later.]
... Why did you fight? [His voice is quiet, even, measured. Close to analytical.] To get me back.
(he wants to leave, not be so close to yu when he's this mad. it's not the curse, far from it, or else he would not even have the choice of leaving nor the emotions that pop into his mind when he has to move past the sea of bodies around them to get away. this is just what he keeps trying to explain; it was him, and it wasn't. all the bad things about him enhanced till there was nothing left of him; the violence that he held was always there.
so, he just wants to sit with his back turned, far, far from all of this, avoiding, as he always does. he wants to think he's better, surely so, but he can't be, if this is how he copes.
hiding.)
Because if me leaving you didn't tell you this, then I have to. I'm a selfish asshole.
(that's not it. it's because of the answer being 'because i love you'. he knows yu will try to argue with him using it.
if anything is a relief is that yu's always known he's difficult. he has never been anything less.)
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expiationlogs2025-01-13 12:39 pm
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