june catch-all

[mehanizovati]

Who: viktor and others, open to all with some closed prompts in comments
What: june catch-all, some tdm prompts
When: june
Where: various

content warning; terminal illness, arcane season 1 spoilers



misc lab stuff and various fruits.

[viktor's lab in the willful machine is usually left unlocked when he's working inside. friends or acquaintances have likely been told they're welcome to stop by if they like, either to say hello or to get help with whatever a vaguely sketchy lab could handle. of course someone he doesn't know can just walk in too or knock. maybe there's a sudden downpour and that ajar door is tempting? go for it.

the lab has been slowly filling with all sorts of nonsense on the various tables- lasers! tasers! some weird machine hooked up to a blood gem? it is not unlikely to be walking by and hear some minor booming noise and either a curse in czech or a satisfied 'a-ha!' feel free to investigate.

this month there's something else too, a bowl full of fruit. all the fruits mentioned in the tdm in fact, there to be tested on though it looks more like they're just for guests if people are unaware there's some weird shit going on.]

Just a moment, make yourself at home. [he might say to guest. that would include eating some fruit, right? enjoy. probably not the raw lemon though, that's weird.]

[ooc; if you want to memshare i am game, my only hard limit on memories is no suicide stuff please. self sacrifice is fine! feel free to ask to make sure one is okay. if you'd like a viktor memory let me know any hard limits and what sort of memory you might prefer!]


gaze and time loops.

[having lungs mostly working for the moment is pretty great, in viktor's humble opinion. it means walking around the trench doesn't come with the risk of coughing up blood and attracting beasts and generally having a bad time, along with added perks like not getting so easily winded and going for longer. it also means he finds himself out longer than he usually would, which maybe isn't the best, as it turns out.

for example, making his way home through gaze and hearing the chilling cry of a beast, sighing and trying to make his way around what turns out to be the wrong corner. maybe that's where he sees your character before the snarling of a too close beast starts in earnest.

and then snap! they're both back about an hour, where they passed on the street. the look viktor gives is somewhere between resigned and 'fuck this, actually.'] There is a term for this. 'One of those days,' I think.



[ooc; if you'd like to wildcard or do something else you can pm me here or find me at dichotomy]

Comments

cw: child death

[noniad]

[The arrival of the creature from memory is startling, as a lance of light through an unnoticed gap between boards. He is not accustomed to animals of any kind, and has been unnerved many times by the abrupt appearance of some strange, unknown beast from the edge of the wood, with wings and tails and all manner of form.

Rio does not frighten him. There is an air about her, despite her alien appearance and her great size, of peace. When she approaches, he unfolds his hand from his lap, extending it to her in apprehensive echo of Viktor's child-self.]

I do not believe there is naivety in the belief that one carries traces of those one has cared for with them. [He says, softly.] Are we not the sum of those who we have known? Who have shaped us?

[More true for some than it is for others, and there is the wall rising before him, the one he built brick by dull brick over the gravest secret of a darkened House. He cannot strike down that wall for who it protects, but he may shift one brick, with bloodied fingers dug into crumbling mortar.]

They died. [There is no poetry in him for this, no lyricism to shroud it.] There was a crèche flu. It is not a thing we speak of, on the Ninth.

[mehanizovati]

[rio, viktor has found, at the very least has some understanding of the people viktor knows. he's only ever seen her be uneasy around people he does not know or people he himself is uneasy about, which he supposes makes sense. even if she truly is rio and not a reflection of him they are still without a doubt connected, tied closer than they ever were in life.

(and he is so deeply, endlessly grateful she does not reflect the image of rio as he last saw her, diminished and floating in that vat like another pickled creature to be dissected. horrifyingly alive after so many years.)

in this case she has only curiosity over ortus, a little flick of her tongue before she's butting his hand with her head. viktor's lips quirk faintly with it, and what ortus says in turn.] I suppose so. Even relentless sentiment has its place regardless.

[a brief pause and he decides to admit,] Her fate wasn't kind. I think that is why it is particularly important to me, to imagine she is here and not suffering.

['they' strikes him. not 'he died' but they, which could simply be a matter of pronouns or could be a dire plurality. given what sounds like it could be an outbreak? his hopes are not high.]

Why do you not speak of it? I can understand avoiding what is painful or moving on, but some matters deserve remembering.

cw: mass child death

[noniad]

[Ortus occupies himself with his tentative attempt to pet Rio, allowing her butting head to be his guide as to how to proceed. She does not feel as he feared she might, uncertain of what her skin is even made of. His gaze flicks up at the mention of her unkind fate, and is softer when it falls. Relentless sentiment. It sounds like a thing the Marshal Crux might have said, rigid with contempt. It, too, does not feel as he expects it to.

There is something admirable in the concept when Viktor says it, even if delivered with one of his slight, weary smiles. Relentless, a word more often used for pursuit and for conflict, as if sentiment was, in its own way, some amalgam of both.]

There were two hundred and two youth of the Ninth House, infants to nineteen years of age. After the flu, but two remained. Myself, and an infant, both spared the disease by circumstance.

[He expects his voice to quake, for tears to well up in him from sternum to the top of his head, dissolving into the kind of helpless, silent weeping he is accustomed to. His words are, instead, hushed and steady as footfalls in a tomb.]

I suppose they did not imagine such a thing could be forgotten. [That is not why the House fell silent, but there are secrets that are not his to let slip; secrets he keeps willingly, for those they would harm.] Or perhaps it was merely not spoken of in my presence, for what I signified.

[He runs his thumb gently over the arch of Rio's head, examining her dark eyes, their lovely and complex depths.]

Fate is often unkind to those who least deserve such a thing.

[mehanizovati]

[rio is an odd mix of salamander and axolotl, and the feeling of her skin likely reflects that. or scales really, dry and cool but oddly smooth. she seems content to trill softly and rest against ortus, closing her massive eyes as viktor takes in that body count with a grimace.]

Was the infant Harrow or Gideon? [he can't help but ask. he hasn't meant harrow but gideon is clearly younger than ortus, and what a way to be raised for either of them, in childless halls.

he thinks of palamedes speaking of the troubles of the sixth with valid family lines, consanguinity. he wonders if such a thing is a death sentence for the ninth, and what is done about that if it's true. what would happen to this dreaded tomb with no guardians?]

I can imagine it was an impossible task, how a house can grieve and still raise the few survivors without letting that grief cause undue damage. [a pause and he offers,] In the undercity many do not make it, for one reason or another. It is never spoken of but I am sure we have all felt those moments of wondering why we were the ones to survive it all, in the end.

[noniad]

[Viktor's words are kindly meant, kindly said. It is not his fault that they draw up a bitterness that threatens to choke Ortus - or worse yet, to loosen his tongue, and allow those eighteen (endless) years to spill unguarded from his lips.

He knows precisely why he survived. None of the survivors escaped unscathed, but each were scourged alone, and that has been one of the sharpest barbs of Ortus' grief since his first wretched understanding of that damning why.]

Gideon. [He bends over Rio, his petting growing in assuredness, anxiety pulled in another direction.] She was always robust of constitution. Fortunate as well.

[The child who fell from the sky, who had briefly been the most interesting thing that Ortus ever imagined might happen on their quiet little rock of a world.]

Harrowhark was born some time afterwards. [Some time, to obscure myriad (two hundred) sins.] It was no way for children to be brought up. I have often regretted... [he sighs, looking back up at Viktor with sad, steady gaze] I have often regretted. I suppose such is the lot of adulthood.

[mehanizovati]

Was she the first child born after it all? [what a nightmare that must have been, for each. he frowns, idly watching rio's tail happily sway.

what an oddity, two kinds of loneliness- one where the children turned their backs to him and the other where there were no children to turn away. he wonders if the trench is pointed here, cherry picking these memories like a theme, before he lets out a soft sigh.]

I suppose it is. For what little it is worth I am glad you are here now, to speak of it.

[noniad]

And the last.

[If Ortus were privy to Viktor's thoughts, he would share in the sense of deliberate contrast of it all. He had been lonely in some of the way that Viktor was, but perhaps the closed, small world of the Ninth created more unity between its children than the open gash of Zaun.]

The whole of a House's future given to one child at her birth. [Another sigh, softer.] To be overlooked, or to be looked to overmuch. I cannot begin to judge which is the greater burden.

I am glad that you are, as well. [He manages a lightening of expression, if not a smile.] I am glad to be able to speak of it.

[mehanizovati]

... the Ninth stopped having children after Harrow?

[odd. alarming, really. how could they possibly survive otherwise?]

They both offer their pressures and their scars. Worse still when one envies the other, needless bitterness against the wrong source. [viktor sighs, thinking a little of jayce despite himself. at least they never fought over such things. haha.

he offers the ghost of a smile back.] I wonder if this was thematic, in a sense. About the same age, about certain lonelinesses and singular, old friends.

[noniad]

Yes.

[An oddity indeed, one that Ortus never found adequate answer for, when it finally occurred to him to contemplate it.]

The Ninth was never a fecund House. We lack the resources of other Houses, as well as their flesh magicians. Another type of envy, that disparity in the material conditions.

[Something he could understand in Viktor's memory of that strange, bright world. For all of the wealth of sunlight, he could recognize the signs of other deprivations all too well.]

I have been told that this place seeks to foster connections between Sleepers. Perhaps this is one of the mechanisms that encourages such things? [To lighter topics, by comparison; all things considered, the concept of magic that shares memories for some higher end is almost explicable to Ortus.] Well-chosen memories, if that is so.

[mehanizovati]

Ah, that does explain many matters. Admittedly I only know what Palamedes has told me, but the ah... inequality of resources is a familiar one.

[one that makes his lips thin a bit. if only it weren't such a familiar matter between worlds, but alas.

the bit about connection makes him tilt his head, considering.] Many of the issues we face are only resolved with the help of another. Some pointedly punish isolation.

Well, in this matter it was well chosen, though pointless. I already respect you a great deal, Ortus, even without such Trench tricks. [said with the easy confidence of something that is simply true. what can he say? ortus is a good guy.]

[noniad]

[Ortus ponders if the alikeness in the patchworks of their youth is another contributor to this fellow feeling, but he knows that is only a part of it. There are many who, through little fault of their own, turn less generous under the grinding weight of need.

In some ways, he was one of them.]

I respect you as well, Viktor.

[The gravitas of the words announce their significance. Respect has not been a thing accorded Ortus often, if ever. It touches a part of himself he thought withered into nothing long ago.]

I suppose the lesson is more aimed at myself. [He looks to Rio, contented and peaceable.] It is good to have a friend, in the dark.