Trustfell 4: Trust Fall or Die Hard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
trustwellness) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
trusthell2017-02-05 11:51 am
trustwellness) wrote in trusthell2017-02-05 11:51 am
WEEK 3.
As the second week draws to a close, two more have joined the deceased. Christo and Alani are dead, leaving twenty-six of you remaining. It may not seem like very many have died, but their absence will certainly be felt. Saturday is given to regrouping and rest; on Sunday morning the clock chimes as it always has, but at least there are no bodies to find today. It seems you're safe for now. The night before wasn't necessarily a peaceful one, however; you'll probably feel a bit groggy when you wake up, and it seems you've regained something that you didn't realize you'd lost... Just like last week, a door in the stairwell has opened, leading you down further into the building; there are more rooms open to you down there - possibly even one that you'll find personally interesting. Go ahead and explore all you like; after all, you did well at completing your lessons this past week. APPRENTICES REMAINING: 25 |
SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY
[OOC: Welcome to week three of Trustfell! Feel free to make as many top levels as you'd like and tag out to other characters! This post is for all of your interactions this week... at least until the weekend. Don't forget to save those threads for coins and the activity check!
If you'd like to get in contact with the Wordsmith, you can do so through letters or the switchboard!]
bar ofc
Do you want a drink? [ just. while she's staring at that thing, and while she's here, she like. offered to owe him one anyway. does he want that now, or ]
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[...I mean it's kind of cute, in its own deranged way. Look at it go! But still.]
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It's sort of cute, at least. In a weird way. [ She'll make her way 'round the counter to skim through some alcohol and figure out something to make that's not going to be... too hard, all things considered.
...She does not really think he's a martini kind of guy, so there goes the one from her dream this morning. ] Any requests?
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[It's easily-said, at least.]
I'm not really too picky about my alcohol; I wasn't able to have any until really recently, it's all pretty novel still.
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...She's probably a better figure skater than she is a bartender, which reminds her— ]
You told me last week that chemistry's how you connect to the world. [ ... ] For me, that's ice skating. I remembered that recently. Seems silly that I'd forgotten that in the first place, right?
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[...He admittedly sounds a bit wigged out, but you know what, we can't have everything.]
Good that you remembered, though. Being cut off from that sort of thing isn't exactly anyone's idea of a good time.
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...No, it's not. [ ...he's probably not going to care too much—he's not the guy people go to for understanding and all that, after all—but, well. She'd already told Watanuki, and it had felt... somewhat better to get it off her chest.
Maybe talking it out to someone who doesn't do the understanding thing is worth something. Her voice is a little on the soft side when she starts, and more than a little wistful. ] I was a professional just like Viktor is, and I was happy, and... I had to quit because I fell during a jump and hurt my knee pretty badly.
[ That was her own fault, actually. Her knee'd been hurting before it, but she figured she would've been fine. ]
Long story short, I can't skate anymore.
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He doesn't say anything right away, or try to interrupt her in any way; he just lets her talk a bit and leaves trying to work out what to tell her for when she's done. Kind of toys with his drink for a moment without taking in any of it.]
I'm not going to try to say that you should just get over it or figure out something else to do or whatever, because that sort of thing's going to screw you up no matter what you do. If it's how you connect to the world...there's no replacing that, and anyone who tries to get you to just let go of it doesn't get it.
So I'm not going to try to tell you it's all okay when it's not, and I'm not going to say that I understand everything, either. But I get it...enough, I think, to know that sort of thing isn't going to help in the first place.
[...]
Is it still messing you up here? Where that's not even a thing we could do here in the first place. It's still bothering you?
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It's bad; once she begins, she finds she can't stop. ]
A little. More than connecting with the world, it was... [ ...how does she put it? ] When I was a little girl, I'd always get my mom to read me a certain picture book—Chavvot—and the titular character liked to skate. She was deaf and mute, so it was her way of expressing herself in a world where she couldn't use words.
I don't have the same problem as her [ obviously. ] but it was... nice, having another way to do that. People can't understand each other just by talking, no matter how much they try—everyone's experiences'll be too different. We can sympathize all we want—we can say, "That's too bad" or "I'm so sorry," but really understanding why someone's upset, or feeling exactly how they feel?
[ ...She's going to make herself something, even if her hands a little unsteady. ]
It's impossible, but ice skating brought me a little closer to that, and I was crushed when I heard the news. I cried for weeks, I avoided my friends—the ones I'd met through ice skating, people I'd practically grown up beside on the rink—and my family, and eventually, I—
[ Chiyuki does cut herself off there, wordlessly pouring alcohol into a glass and stirring it. ]
I ended up at the bar, and then I ended up here. [ There's a step she's missing, but it's not... ] I'm more bothered about how I acted, I think, but not being able to skate is part of it.
[ And that... was still long, but she's finished her blue cocktail, she'll be fine just sipping it and being relieved it doesn't knock her out. ]
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You remember what I told you? About...prison, and about waiting to die. You remember all of that?
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When the war came to an end, though... I knew I didn't have anything left. There's nothing but the battlefield for people like me, you know? We're wired wrong and designed to die before we're thirty.
So toward the end of the war, I started doing things on my own terms. No feelings, no regrets. They caught me eventually, and that's when I did the things that actually put me on death row.
I think I was hoping they'd shoot me, somewhere in there. I just know that something sort of snapped, and it was because of what you're talking about, I guess. Obviously to a different degree, and you probably think what I'm talking about is fucked up and that's fine. But still, the sense of having nothing when you'd finally found something that's yours... There's something about it that you can't really get rid of.
cw suicide mention
Without a doubt, he'd go to the void. He'd deserve it, and she shouldn't feel as sick about the thought as she does. He's a horrible, terrible person, and it's really—to put it in his words—fucked up, everything he's said. What he's told her, and she wonders if that means he used his alchemy on people too, if that's what he's really getting at, and that's... worse, and she doesn't know how to feel.
On one hand, murder's unforgivable (but maybe this isn't something she has to forgive him for anyway), and it's horrible and it shouldn't happen. On the other, she...
...he...
...it's that "having nothing" thing that's getting her. He took his out on innocent people and hoped he'd get shot for it instead of just being confined for ten years. She took matters into her own hands instead, because she'd had the freedom to do so. ]
...I killed myself because of it. [ She squeezes her glass's stem, the words strained; a few tears drop into her drink too, and she blinks a couple of times to sort of wish them away. ] There wasn't anyone who could understand me, and I felt like I couldn't understand anyone anymore, either, so I just...
[ ...yeah. She'll wipe her cheeks, shaking her head; there's a smile, and it's kind of forced, but that's really just how things work for her. ]
Sorry. [ ... ] I don't think I've met someone as messed up as you, even with all the people I've gotten to meet with my job.
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I'm assuming that's not supposed to be a compliment, but I'm all right with being one of those people that you can look at and go "You know, of all things I could have been, I'm glad I'm not that."
You don't have to apologize to me, though. This got kind of heavy, yeah, but it's not going to mess me up any to hear it.
[And there's a lot in what she said that he'll think about later; the phrasing of "judgement games" makes a lot more sense on her profile, for one thing. But it's not something he's going to ask about for the time being, she's kind of crying and obviously trying not to be upset, and for all his inability to empathize with people he can at least halfway read a room.
He supposes it's sad that she killed herself; there are all sorts of reasons for why it should be sad, and he'd had reactions like that thrown at him before his trial and sentencing - mostly because of his age at the time, and well before he'd made it clear that he didn't regret any of what he'd done, that he'd enjoyed it, that he'd found it fun and getting to die for it was going to be amusing for him rather than any sort of punishment. Maybe, in hindsight, that's why they'd decided they hadn't cared, why it had taken a decade to be dragged out to be killed. Who knows, and who cares, really.
But just the same, somewhere in there he supposes it's sad that she killed herself, and he finds that he doesn't know if he's supposed to express that or not.]
...I'm not really one for "That's too bad" or "I'm so sorry," so you'll have to forgive me for not trying to say it. Because like I said, I'm not really one for feelings or understanding - it'd just be that hollow-sounding shit you don't like, people saying things about stuff they don't understand.
But the fact of it is that I like you, and hearing about this sort of stuff isn't going to make me not like you, and I'm not really interested in judging you for it, either. If you want to talk about stuff with me, you can go ahead and do that. Whenever, I guess.
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Her gaze flits away from him, back to her drink, then to... his cat plant, honestly. The thing is doofy and enjoyable and she hadn't really meant to get this deep, but ice skating's just really... She sounds better when she starts talking again, at least; not quite her usual, but better. ]
Thanks. [ For the offer, for not giving her words she knows he doesn't mean, for hearing her out and at least trying to give half a damn about it. ] I like you too—you really do remind me of my co-worker sometimes. He's also not good at the understanding or feelings thing, I'm pretty sure. [ But he'd wanted to to try and understand her anyway.
You know, maybe Hanyuu was right about the "arbiter taking a liking to her" thing, but that's kind of weird to think about with regards to Decim of all people, uh. ] You do a lot more with your face though, that's for sure. He just... doesn't. I think that's just a him thing though—our... boss? The woman who showed me to the bar in the first place, Nona, she's definitely got more than one look.
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[...]
So it's probably really insensitive for me to ask or something, but do you work for your world's god, or what?
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Not really, and... sort of? Technically, I guess—arbiters judge souls, I'm sort of helping out right now, it's the afterlife—but I've never met any god before I came here and met Hanyuu, and there's not one that's ever talked about.
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he knows almost everything else, she can disparage a little more. ]
Reincarnation and the void, actually. People can think it's heaven and hell all they want, but it's just either a second chance or nothing at all.
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Really - that sounds a bit more like where I'm from, believe it or not. We don't get a bar, and we've only got one thing that can be considered an arbiter, but the concept of reincarnation or nothing at all is familiar.
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How do they judge souls? Ours are by games, like I've mentioned—using memories and how they act towards each other and in general during the game, an arbiter decides where they ultimately go.
[ That's something she's gotten a little frustrated about, now that she's been thinking more and more about it, but it's only showing in the drum of her nails on the counter. ]
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[Like...human-transmutation rare.]
Either way, though, my understanding of what happens after we die is that whatever makes us...well, us, is brought back into the world in some way or another. How it manifests is what Truth decides - some of us are sent back into the world to become other people, some of us are used to create other natural things like trees and deer and stuff, some of us are used to power transmutations. Theoretically speaking, parts of our souls could be used for all three of those things, I guess.
Either way, Truth decides what happens to us; our souls get dispersed to become part of the world's energy either way. So even if I were to be brought back into the world as another living thing, it still wouldn't be me - technically, I'm never going to exist ever again after I die. But I don't think we're ever really gone, either. Some of us are just...a little unfortunately-used and never conscious again, either.
[...]
Of course, none of this has been proven beyond a doubt. Maybe I'm completely wrong. But it's what makes the most sense to me, given how our souls work.
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She wonders if when they die here, if they go to her bar, or his Truth, or if they go somewhere else, or maybe nowhere at all.
She's not really sure she wants to know. ]
If it works for you, it works for you. Most people are happy thinking they're going somewhere after everything they've been through.
[ Most people'd prefer the better approach, obviously, but not everyone's a saint; everyone has some sin in them, and some of those are heavier than others, but even then, it's not like they can't still get a good ending. ]
...And I don't suppose you've ever thought about what or who you might've been before you were you.
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It's not permanent for us, but it still affects other people, and sometimes that gets talked about for a lot longer than we expect it to. [ Legends, stories, all of that. But: ] You're not wrong though, overall. Most of us aren't going to be remembered in the long run.
[ ............ ]
You might be though. [ Mr. "Prime Example of Why We Shouldn't Conscript People Like This Into The Army" ] Not for any good reason though. While we're being honest with each other.
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