3 ᴍɪʟʟɪᴏɴ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ɪɴ ᴀ ᴛʀᴇɴᴄʜᴄᴏᴀᴛ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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logs2022-10-05 01:20 pm
somatosensory) wrote in logs2022-10-05 01:20 pm
— villainy wears many masks
WHO: aristaeus & others
WHERE: around the netherworld
WHEN: month of october
WHAT: catch-all
WARNINGS: will update as needed!
NOTES: Starters will be in the comments. Feel free to hit me up at![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
resurrectionist or at the event planning comment for plotting.
© tessisamess
WHERE: around the netherworld
WHEN: month of october
WHAT: catch-all
WARNINGS: will update as needed!
NOTES: Starters will be in the comments. Feel free to hit me up at
WILDCARD OPTIONS
CR: OPEN TO ALL; GEN-FAVOURED OFFERING:- KNOCK ON WOOD - General woodland encounters; he'll be escorting/teaming up with Johanna (exilire) but the woods are tricksy so it'll be easy to run into people. BONUS: Monster encounters
- GO BIG OR GOURD HOME - Feast and Harvest Hunt meet-cutes. For the Feast, I'm interested in: grablenuts, will-o-the-whiskey and elysium particularly. For the Hunt, he'll probably be the hunter.
- PARADE - No solid plans. He'd be really pressed about body-swapping.
- WAYWARD SUN - Quite probably going to try to fight the Horseman to be honest.
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[ for saving his life. again. she ignores the rest both because she doesn't want to hear it and because she doesn't want to ask how else could you react? violence is what she knows. her whole life has been violent.
she gets onto her feet, slowly, like she is afraid he will somehow hear the noise. ]
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not that he needs to be able to see her to know that she's about to do something unwise. )
For making it easy? ( keeping her talking. he knows what she'd meant, of course, but she can't honestly expect him to thank her for what she did. not when she'd still run in the end. )
If I didn't know better, I'd think you were hoping to be caught.
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because he wants to find her. right. the game. ]
You're wasting your time.
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( running the gamut of desperate to furious. mavis just sounds — resolved, perhaps. determined. she's going to do what she wants regardless of the cost, because she believes it's the best — perhaps the only — option.
just as well that he's always enjoyed a good chase.
he angles his head to the side, listening. there's another participant nearby, their heartbeat rabbiting. )
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[ she can hear them, too. the other participants. quieter than the city had been, yes, but she is aware of every body in this maze. like the glow of flashlights, their thoughts radiate through the defacto walls.
she uses them to navigate. picking her way down a path to her right. away, away. ]
I'm not here to play the game. I'm not your competition.
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( amusement still hovers in his tone — had she really thought this was just about the game?
the next turn brings him face-to-face with a pair gaggle of teenagers. head canting, he spends a brief moment considering how best to handle them before settling on letting them pass. they're not going to take their chances, he thinks. )
What surprises me is that you think it'll make a difference.
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[ she reaches out to press her hand against the maze wall. her palm fits between stalks of corn. the leaves and husks are coarse on her skin, but for as tightly packed as it is, there's room there. room enough to hide, if it's thick enough.
she looks over her shoulder, both ways, then slips inside the wall. ]
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and she's a target. dying hasn't changed that. )
It won't bring them back. ( and there's a lilt of something to it that tries so hard to be casual and composed, but fails utterly. this is a fresh wound, one that's going to take time to scab over. )
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[ there's a sense of probing as she presses up against his presence there in her mind, where he punctures her like a thorn. no. more like where his skin still surrounds the bur of herself that she'd stuck in him, right? this was her doing.
it doesn't feel like it, she thinks, just before she sneezes from the irritants of the crops and dust in the thick of the wall. ]
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Relief.
( to not be here, is what he means. can she understand what it means to know that he has to rely on her, of all people, for his stability? )
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[ waste of time.
she has no relief to give him. no friends to return. no peace to give, either through her death or his. they've already tried that, it would seem, and they're still running around just the same.
she wedges her way back towards what she thinks is the entrance. more people. more minds. she could get lost in them, blot his presence out. she picks up her pace, ignoring the mounting nausea that climbs up from her gut to her chest, like bile is not just crawling up her throat but filling her lungs. ]
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( what's that old saying about misery loving company?
besides, there's no getting around a fixation this ingrained. few as they've been, aristaeus knows the patterns well enough by now. knows she's going to itch and itch and itch at him until he finds some way to scratch it. it only makes sense, therefore, to find her. to hold onto her until he can figure out the rest. )
I wouldn't. ( it's said, catching the tail end of her thought. diving into a crowd might muddy the trail a little, but that just gives him an excuse to get excessive.
does she want that on her conscience? because he doesn't mind ensuring this harvest festival is extra memorable. )
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[ she wants nothing in common with him. whatever he chooses to do out there, that's on him. she knows what it means to carry other people's debts — she had been spared it, but other kuruko had not been so lucky. she won't carry his. she has no reason for it.
there's another reason to select the entrance. maybe if it wreaks havoc on her senses, being around all these people, then it will do the same for him. just as she had tasted the blood in his mouth in the ruin. just as she can feel the sweat on the back of his neck, now.
so even though it feels like emerging from a dark cavern to noontime light, she breaks the boundary of the corn maze for the entrance.
'hey!' someone shouts at her, but it's immediately washed away in the din of inner voices. a boy who wonders if he can tell his best friend that they're in love. a pickpocket trying to snatch a wallet. ]
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( what did i tell you about running your mouth? an edge on the voice now, the disapproval sharp enough to draw blood.
it brings him right back to the training yard. )
Not helping. ( muttered, head shaking as if to clear it. the voice — pallas who isn't pallas because pallas can't possibly be here — just laughs. it laughs and laughs and laughs.
well. fuck it, then.
trying to beat mavis out of the maze the usual way isn't going to work. even if he could cross that kind of distance.
he tests the corn — not solid enough to carry his weight and for all his skill, he'd never managed that kind of sustained weightlessness that would help him get around that. which leaves only one option: going through it. )
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someone jumps out of the corn maze to spook passerby. their fear spikes her heart rate. mavis stumbles into a drunken reveler who is a singing a tune that she doesn't recognize, whether because he's slurring it or because there it shares nothing in common with the songs of the wilds.
the lights are too bright and seem to flash everywhere she looks. bodies, bodies, bodies bump her around. she can feel the sweat on the back of their necks because they wear thick jackets against the chill that leave them stuffy and overheated in the crowd.
and there, in the back of her mind, why are you fleeing? he should be running. you could kill him. you could kill all of them. she picks up to a run, back into the streets of mirth, away from the edge of the neighborhood where the maze was built. if she stays, she will hurt someone. ]
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there's a vague awareness of sound around him: laughter, the high-pitched shrieks of noise that could be delight or terror (likely both, considering). moving between the maze, his awareness is compressed to these snapshot impressions.
he doesn't slow. knows better than to allow himself to be distracted, even as things pluck at him from all sides. instead, he lets his instinct drive him.
eventually, he bursts from the maze, stumbling uncertainly as he tries to reclaim his bearings. the park is much louder than he remembered it being. mavis' disorientation overlays his senses.
(she'd never learned to filter out the white noise. it's a shame he'd never thought to use this against her.)
someone brave draws closer, their voice pitched in the soft and careful tones of concern. he must look at least as bad as he feels. )
Get the fuck away from me, ( he snaps, a flash of perfect white teeth to drive home the point.
he doesn't want anyone's help, he just wants them to get out of his way. )
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it's his arm that someone touches, trying to help stabilize him. but mavis has broken through the crowd into an emptier alley. yet it feels like her arm.
and that's enough. something inside of her tips.
then explodes. a flare of energy that turns combustive, the flare catching onto a nearby garbage can. sparks pop off, scaring off a group of five adolescents who are laughing and kicking rocks past the alley where mavis collapses to her knees, nauseated and numb and terrified. ]
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Fuck.
( the crowd moves around him like a river. he casts around, searching for her. )
Tell me where you are.
( he doesn't expect her to answer him — not with words, anyway. but she's open, and exposed. perhaps he can catch something?
finding her has stopped being about a want and become an immediate need. not just for his sake, now, but for hers. )
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she tries to orient herself, to feel out at what's around her, to get a look at her surroundings. they don't make sense. if anything, it disorients her more because there is fire and there are scared strangers who don't know that it was her fault and there is a rat, something wet dripping down the wall, there is —
corn husks. sweat. people holding onto her. the neon sign of the corn maze's opening, the smell of popcorn and frying oil that turns her stomach. these are not the same place, they are not the alley she is in, but they both feel real to her.
her skin hums. vibrates. like she's going to explode out of it — again? — and she reaches out for the various corns and the stink of oil and for him, for him, because if she is going to set anything on fire, gods, let it be him. she tries to hold him firm in her mind. like following a trail, or chasing the end of a thread to untangle a knot.
she doesn't say anything. she's not telling him anything, not if she can help it, but it's not so noble of her. no, she's not telling him anything because if she opens her mouth, she will absolutely vomit, and she cannot straighten out the chaos of her thoughts into tidy rows to think anything like 'go fuck yourself' in his general direction coherently either. ]
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despite this, the park is large, and there are plenty of places for her to hide.
— but, no. she'd be looking for somewhere quiet. that cuts the options down somewhat. with this in mind, he moves toward the park's exit. )
One of these days, we're having a long talk about filtering.
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he could help you, something whispers. he could teach you. you stupid bitch, you don't have to be attacking people.
she has suffered worse than this, she tells herself. dehydration in the desert. broken bones that she had set herself. how many pains has she staggered through, and emerged fine? she won't let this defeat her.
that's what she tells herself, right before she stumbles back to the alley floor. something soaks her pants. she looks down to see a puddle of rain gathered in a place where the concrete dips. seeing her reflection in it, outlined by the light of the fire she'd set, she smacks her hand down in the middle of it. ]
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irritation makes her presence flare. it saves him the effort of trying to hunt for her, at least, but it's a small comfort. in the back of his mind he can feel the churn of storm clouds gathering, can practically taste the sting of ozone on his tongue. )
Hold on.
( a threat and a promise. hold on, i'm coming. it's unlikely to be much of a comfort to her — this is bigger than both of them. )
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breathing through her mouth, she tips her head back too-hard on the stone wall. closes her eyes. tries to push any of it away. it is a little quieter, when her eyes aren't also trying to process something. she pulls her hand out of the water, curls her knees up towards herself, tries to perceive less whatever that means.
she's still sitting curled up like this when he finds her, if only because it is taking everything she can to let the thoughts wash over her instead of overwhelm her. she couldn't get to her feet like this. that would require acknowledging her physical existence again and all the sensations that come with it, which have proven far too much for her. ]
we're going to pretend the icon is basically from that one gif
You don't look so good.
( it's said as he stops in front of her. pauses to survey the damage before his attention shifts invariably back to her.
it's a pathetic sight. worst of all, he can't seem to find any pleasure in her discomfort, despite it being fully earned.)
Ask me. ( and then again, as if she needed the clarification: ) Ask me to make it stop.
which one and why haven't i iconned it yet
she presses her palms to her closed eyes. grits her teeth. tries to push herself through it. she does not want his help. she does not want anything to do with that traitor. she had taken his help once and regretted it. doing it again feels like damning herself.
but her head is swimming and her chest is tight and it is not getting any better.
you hurt those people. you're going to hurt more because you're selfish and stupid and stubborn. so what if he betrays you again? the jarl was right. you're a monster, a danger to those around you. you deserve all that and more.
the memory surges to the surface. she is a child again, all too-thin limbs and skinned knees, in the jarl's tent. four adults loom around her, tears run down her face as he tells her that she has to leave the camp.
'and go where?' she asks, but he can't tell her. they can't help her. no one in the wilds can. her fingernails dig into her forehead. there is snot on her upper lip, and tears gather in her eyelashes, smeared by her palms. ]
Make it stop.
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